Good Decision!

The Supreme Court's ruling that a school strip-searching a 13-year-old girl is illegal was a nice surprise, as was (even more so) the 8-1 ruling. Clarence Thomas' dissent was presumably built around this piece of silly logic (I say presumably because I haven't read the opinion):

Judges are not qualified to second-guess the best manner for maintaining quiet and order in the school environment.

That's a broad statement. What if a school decides to water-board its students, or make them stand in place for the entire school day so they'll rat out their weed-dealing buddies? Judges aren't qualified to say that is wrong? I'd say we need some more qualified judges then.

Update: More on that dissent from Alterdestiny:

Thomas's dissent (also found in the linked document above) is based around the argument that any kind of search is reasonable (given some kind of "reasonable suspicion") if it is conducted only in places were the contraband could be hidden. His logic is that since you could hide pills in your crotch, school officials could look there (there's even a pretty weird part of the dissent where he cites several incidences of people hiding drugs in their underwear... I'll refrain from snark and you let you imagine your own). He contends that school officials, parents, and local governments are all "better suited than judges to determine the appropriate limits on searches". Wait, what? Isn't upholding and interpreting the Fourth Amendment a judicial bailiwick? Where's the logic in school administrators deciding if their actions are reasonable in cases like this? Is it only different because it is a school? Granted, the court has held that there are slightly different rules in schools, but the Constitution doesn't end at the school's door. This seems like a completely ideological decision on his part, and the opinion contains a strange line in its last paragraph-- "By doing so [finding the search unconstitutional], the majority has confirmed that a return to the doctrine of in loco parentis is required to keep the judiciary from essentially seizing control of public schools". Seriously? Are you trying to make Scalia and Alito look reasonable or something?