Behold the protection of your privacy rights!
The Supreme Court has ruled that jailers may subject people arrested for minor offenses to invasive strip searches, siding with security needs over privacy rights.Do we really need to do research in order to figure out who the 5 and who the 4 were? So libertarians the next time you are rectally-probed following that speeding ticket or unpaid petty fine, just remember to "bend over and think of the 'penumbra' of privacy rights you managed to get rid of."
By a 5-4 vote Monday, the court ruled against a New Jersey man who complained that strip searches in two county jails violated his civil rights.
Justice Anthony Kennedy said in his majority opinion for the court's conservative justices that when people are going to be put into the general jail population, "courts must defer to the judgment of correctional officials unless the record contains substantial evidence showing their policies are an unnecessary or unjustified response to problems of jail security."
In a dissenting opinion joined by the court's liberals, Justice Stephen Breyer said strip searches improperly "subject those arrested for minor offenses to serious invasions of their personal privacy."