Summarize the Supreme Court decision in Florence v. Board of Chosen Freeholders of Burlington and Essex Counties, including the arguments on both sides. State your opinion of the ruling and give a reason.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Varies. A sample answer follows. In a 5-to-4 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court held that jail administrators could require all inmates in the general population to submit to visual strip searches without any reasonable suspicion that the inmate might commit some serious rule infraction or crime. The majority of justices ruled that some people held in jails could be quite dangerous and cited the case of domestic terrorist Timothy McVeigh. They further noted that jails are very dangerous places that are subject to gang violence, contagious diseases, and drug smuggling. These uncertainties of jail safety led the majority to rule that the interests of security in jail outweigh the support for a ban on the searching of every inmate. The dissenting opinion was that strip searches are a "serious affront to human dignity and to individual privacy" and that they constitute an unreasonable search forbidden by the Fourth Amendment.
I agree with the dissenting opinion. Suspicionless searches treat people as guilty until proved innocent.