Lower Court Holding in Florence v. Burlington, et al.
Decision of the Third Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals
This interlocutory appeal requires us to decide whether it is constitutional for jails to strip search arrestees upon their admission to the general population. Although the question is one of first impression for this Court, the Supreme Court’s decision in Bell v. Wolfish (1979), and the many cases that followed it, inform our analysis. In Bell, the Supreme Court rejected a Fourth Amendment challenge to a policy of visual body cavity searches for all detainees — regardless of the reason for their incarceration — after contact visits with outsiders. The Court applied a balancing test and concluded that the visual…
