Hot off the docket. Josh Blackman calls this a 'strong vehicle' for the court to reconsider qualified immunity. QI has been under attack in some of the lower courts, but to date, SCOTUS has been standing by it. Let's see what happens:
I.B. AND JANE DOE, v. APRIL WOODARD, ET AL.
QUESTIONS PRESENTED:
Petitioner I.B. was four years old when respondent Woodard, a state caseworker, strip-searched and photographed her at preschool. Woodard had neither a warrant nor parental consent. All she had was a report making unfounded abuse allegations—specifically, of various marks or bruises on I.B. And a narrower, initial search of I.B. (or even looking at areas of I.B.’s body in plain view) readily would have disproven these allegations. Woodard eventually acknowledged that no marks on I.B.’s body were consistent with the unfounded allegations. Woodard then lied about the incident to I.B.’s mother, petitioner Jane Doe, for weeks.
A divided Tenth Circuit panel affirmed the dismissal of petitioners’ Fourth Amendment claims on qualified-immunity grounds.
The questions presented are:
I.B. AND JANE DOE, v. APRIL WOODARD, ET AL.
QUESTIONS PRESENTED:
Petitioner I.B. was four years old when respondent Woodard, a state caseworker, strip-searched and photographed her at preschool. Woodard had neither a warrant nor parental consent. All she had was a report making unfounded abuse allegations—specifically, of various marks or bruises on I.B. And a narrower, initial search of I.B. (or even looking at areas of I.B.’s body in plain view) readily would have disproven these allegations. Woodard eventually acknowledged that no marks on I.B.’s body were consistent with the unfounded allegations. Woodard then lied about the incident to I.B.’s mother, petitioner Jane Doe, for weeks.
A divided Tenth Circuit panel affirmed the dismissal of petitioners’ Fourth Amendment claims on qualified-immunity grounds.
The questions presented are:
- Whether the Fourth Amendment requires a caseworker who suspects abuse to obtain a warrant to stripsearch a child, an issue that has produced an acknowledged 4-2 circuit split—and is nearly identical to the issue this Court granted certiorari on but did not resolve in Camreta v. Greene, 563 U.S. 692, 698 (2011).
- Even if a warrant is not required in this context, whether clearly established law prohibits conducting warrantless strip searches of children at school where there are no “specific suspicions” of danger or wrongdoing justifying the “categorically extreme intrusiveness of a search down to the body.” Safford Unified Sch. Dist. No. 1 v. Redding, 557 U.S. 364, 376-377 (2009).
- Whether this Court should reconsider its qualified immunity jurisprudence to accord with historical commonlaw practice and to eliminate the widespread confusion plaguing current qualified-immunity doctrine.
