Sotomayor Strip Search Dissent A Clue To Her Civil Rights Position

Village Voice:

Last week, while President Obama was vetting her credentials out of the Oval Office, Judge Sonia Sotomayor firmly dissented from her appeals court colleagues on a case that -- while it surely won't be considered a landmark ruling in the vein of saving Major League Baseball -- suggests her approach to civil rights.

The case involved procedures for a clothing exchange -- in which inmates trade their civilian clothes for prison garb -- in a county jail upstate. At issue was whether prison guards who watched inmates undressing during the clothing exchange, in violation of jail policy, were conducting an unwarranted search and therefore violating the prisoner's Fourth Amendment rights.

Read the whole story: Village Voice

Comments

[mitsie]

I like this woman already.

[hollybork]

Sottomajor's dissent is correct. I am heartened to see the right of privacy and freedom from unnecessary search and seizure will be living principles with this future Justice of the Supreme Court. CB

[zizyphus]

Sotomayor's decision shows she has common sense, and common decency.

[jesseandrews]

Ok I see here people bringing up La Raza, lets say a white judge was nominated like Alito was, they went after him for being associated with a group they considered racist even though the group had never attacked anyone for being of different colot than them. This is the same thing if she is associated with La Raza what is her direct input into the group would it lead to a conflict if they ever had a case before the supreme court. These are the type of questions that are asked and she has to answer them to the satifaction of all.

[jesseandrews]

I think see will make a good SCOTUS but she has to go thru the vetting process, it is the way of politics to make the oppisites pick go thru hard exams. The dems did it to Alito and Obama even threathen to us filabuster,but did not in the end. They said Alito was invovled in a group that they considered racist, so it is all politics. If like I expect her record shows to be good and in line with the Constitution then she should be seated. But they do have to ask hard questions it is a lifetime appointment.

[jesseandrews]

meant she not see

[jesseandrews]

And it was Ted Kennedy that brought up the race issue with Alito.

[ChiGuy]

Frankly, I don't see the issue here.
If you have, or at least are charged with, violating the law, you must go to jail. At least for a few hours until bail is set.
I think the jailers have every reasonable right to ensure that those being held pending this are not transporting contraband on their person into the facility.

[DJ23]

The article state that that was not the protocol.

"According to the county sheriff, the prison protocol, though unwritten, was that prisoners would change clothes behind a half-wall, where they would not be exposed to corrections officers, who were only allowed to look at them undressing or strip-search them if the officers had reasonable cause for suspicion that the prisoners were concealing weapons, drugs, or another form of contraband. Under written procedures, strip-searches were prohibited from being conducted routinely."

If they had reasonable suspicion, they should have said as much and proved it in court.

They obviously didn't prove it to the district court. The district court sided with the two men.

[cjk002]

That's not the issue. These were prisoners who had already been searched, and there was no demonstrated cause for forcing them to change their clothes in front of the officers.

[mitsie]

The deputies or prison guards do not need to violate the rights of anyone. How would you feel if your Dad or Grandfather got handled this way, EVEN FOR A FEW HOURS?

[BruceHNV]

They are searched by the cops, and their pockets emptied, etc. before the get into the jail.

[Seren]

So far the mainstream media have failed to report on the views of the Hispanic community concerning Sotomayor's nomination. I haven't heard any leading figures from the community, being interviewed for their views about this. Even the Huff has not done so. Or have I missed any articles or reports?

[regellner]

Sotomayor was correct in her decision.
An indirect procedure which is done on purpose is actually direct. In other words, regardless of the indirectness of the strip search, it was still meant to be a strip search and therefore it violated the 4th amendment in these cases.

In relation to the Sotomayor nomination, I have the following links of interest:

http://www.examiner.com/x-11326-Charlotte-Liberal-Examiner~y2009m5d26-Sotomayor-selected-as-Supreme-Court-nominee-partisan-battle-lines-drawn-in-Senate

http://www.examiner.com/x-11326-Charlotte-Liberal-Examiner~y2009m5d26-Empathy-is-positive-to-the-Sotomayor-Supreme-Court-selection


Raymond Gellner – Charlotte Liberal Examiner at Examiner.com
http://www.examiner.com/x-11326-Charlotte-Liberal-Examiner

[gmr]

While I have a problem with affirmative action and La Raza, her dissent in this 4th Amendment case hardly seems unreasonable.

[DJ23]

What do you mean you have a problem with affirmative action?

I don't understand how that relates to Judge Sototmayor.

[TotalRecall9]

Try google.

[wdw505]

her ruling on the 3 judge panel with the fire fighters

[ChiGuy]

If you buy into Tancredo's BS about La Raza, you're not paying attention.

[notconfindtweenhatnboots]

I don't see any "affirmative action" in the nomination of Judge Sotomoyer. I don't think there were any qualified white male judges up for this position.... Obviously Bush scraped the bottom of the barrel on putting WM's onto the SC, so there are just none left.

[jimrs6]

Look harder. The liberal legal profession Jonathon Turley has been espousing a not so flattering opinion of Sotomayer on MS-NBC last week.

[theone718]

I love how the media will try to find whatever they can to try to pin someone with a label they like.

[Fullrecovery]

Would sotamayer qualify as a juror?

[BruceHNV]

In what case?

[TotalRecall9]

I agree with her dissent here. You wouldn't want your daughter being strip-searched, especially over a traffic violation. However, I do disagree on her other decisions. This one case does not show that she is a civil rights advocate. She has stated that the 2nd Amendment doesn't apply to the states. She has sided with the government over the Freedom of Information Act. She has sided with school districts over students' right to free speech outside of schools.

[DJ23]

What other decisions of Sotomayor's do you disagree with?

You're speaking in general terms, which seems like you got the info from somewhere else. Site the specific cases(Caption/name).

What you wrote could be found on a Google search.

Have you read up on the cases that you referenced?

If so, what are the names of those cases? I'd like to see for myself.

[TotalRecall9]

You're an a s s. If you want the details, go use google!!! Otherwise, FO because you have nothing to offer but bias.

[notconfindtweenhatnboots]

In August 2007, Judge Sonia Sotomayor sat on a panel that ruled against an appeal in Doninger v. Niehoff.

Avery Doninger was disqualified from running for school government at Lewis S. Mills HS in Burlington after she posted something on her blog, referring to the superintendent and other officials as do.uc.hee bags" because they canceled a battle of the bands she had helped to organize.

The case went to court and in March 2008, Sotomayor was on a panel that heard Doninger’s mother’s appeal alleging her daughter’s free speech and other rights were violated. Her mother wanted to prevent the school from barring her daughter from running.

Sotomayor joined two other judges from the 2nd Circuit in ruling that the student’s off-campus blog remarks created a “foreseeable risk of substantial disruption” at the student’s high school and that the teenager was not entitled to a preliminary injunction reversing a disciplinary action against her, Education Week reports.

[notconfindtweenhatnboots]

Yes I am a little concerned about her as a judge as well. So in her world, if a student speaks out against the school administration, the student may then be barred from taking any leadership (or possibly other) role in the school. Since when do we bar someone from participating in school activities just because they think the actions of the administration is unfair and are expressing themselves.

Now I'm beginning to hope maybe the right will fillibuster and give Obama a chance to pick an actual progressive justice who is supportive of freedom of speech.

[BruceHNV]

All 380 of them? Be specific, so that you can be understood, or don't waste our time.

[BruceHNV]

She did not side with anyone against free speech.

High-schoolers are children. They cannot be criminally penalized for lapses in discretion, and are required to submit to adult discretion. The adults around them can be held criminally and civilly liable for what the students do.

“As the Supreme Court cautioned years ago, “[t]he system of public education that has evolved in this Nation relies necessarily upon the discretion and judgment of school administrators and school board members,” and we are not authorized to intervene absent “violations of specific constitutional guarantees.”

It is the duty, and therefore within the discretion, of school administrators to keep order. The breakdown of in-school discipline has been endemic over the past 20 years, and parents complain of it bitterly - while not teaching their children to be respectful toward, and compliant with, the adults charged with their safety and development.

If the administration has reason to believe that their ability to maintain order and discipline in their school would be weakened by allowing a disrepectful and mean-spirited individual to be elevated to a leadership position among the student body, then they can an should prevent that eventuality.

Instead of using the child's vitriol and it's backlash as a teachable moment, she attacked the adults who were ready to demonstrate that speech has consequences, and that civil society requires structure and respect. The mother also, no doubt, has strong opinions about how ineffective schools are - because they do not keep order.

[brandnewstuff]

I hope the Office of Senator John Cornyn and Texas AG Greg Abbott with Austin Police Department have pissed their pants on As Violators of Civil Rights and Constitutional Rights

[sc300nc]

It is obvious that she is a judicial light-weight and is only being considered due to her gender and race.

[Aabby]

That’s not what her colleges and some fames law professors say but you seem to be the 'expert'.

[DSOTM]

and your judicial pin-head who only listens to Fox news.

[Badfickle]

Yes. obvious.

2nd in her class at Princeton
Editor of the Yale Law Journal
More federal experience on the bench than anyone confirmed to the SCOTUS in 100 years.
More varied experience at the federal level when nominated than any serving on the court.

Clearly only being considered a light-weight because of her gender and race.

[skippypicasso]

Oh, yes, it's so obvious. All you have to do is check out her resume and read some of her decisions. She's nowhere near as qualified as the GOOD judges on the Supreme Court--you know, the ones who bend the Constitution OUR way (wink, wink).

[CUL8R]

That requires one to READ and form one's own conclusions as opposed to rehashing sound bites. So much easier jump over the cliff with the rest of the lemmings.

[305Rider]

Did you just now get those talking points?

[englishprof]

Those poor neocons are looking for whatever controversy they can cook up. Basically, she's too high-calibre a candidate for them.