I'm going to tweet my way through Henry v. Hulett, a Seventh Cir. en banc opinion issued today about 4th Amendment rights of prisoners. In plain language, it's about a mass strip search of women that the prison did as part of a training exercise.

Now, this happened in 2001. There was no emergency. Just training of some new guards. So, you know, something planned. Oh dear, and they called themselves "Orange Crush."

Always a good sign to know that the state is spending tax money to train state employees to call women "bitches."

Then, using our tax money and in our name, for the purpose of training new state employees. women were rounded into the gym and forced to stand for up to seven hours, without water, sitting down, or using the restroom. Then, in view of people walking by,

Oh, but wait, it gets worse. Again, this is how Illinois trains its new employees. To force women to stand naked while screaming at them that "your pussy stinks."

Oh, and for menstruating women: they had to remove tampons and pads. And didn't get replacements. So the women had to stand barefoot on the floor covered in menstrual blood.

And don't worry. There was never an internal investigation. No employee was ever disciplined for this.

So, no surprisingly, the women sued. They brought 8th Amendment and 4th Amendment claims.

The trial court threw out the 4th Amendment claims. Said that because it was just a visual search, no privacy rights for prisoners.

The jury heard the 8th Amd claims, but apparently didn't feel the women proved that anyone intended to harass and humiliate them or for them to suffer psychological pain.

The first appellate panel agreed with the trial decisions. But then, the court took it en banc (to a bigger panel with more judges).

And so the Seventh Circuit had to decide if these women had a constitutionally protected reasonable expectation of privacy. Something, that for prisoners being "visually" searched, the Supreme Court has not clarified.

But prisoners generally don't have privacy rights in their cells, not like people on the outside do for their homes. That kind of makes sense. Prison is ... well ... a prison.

Ah, this is some good language:

Yep, the thing is, it wasn't a given that a court would find that there's a fundamental right in not having people look at your naked body. The law is often an ass.

Phew, privacy in your body isn't incompatible with incarceration.

Oh, this is fascinating. The defendants argued that somehow the 8th Amd. and the 4th Amd. couldn't coexist. But, TL;DR, that didn't fly. Because, it turns out, they are both right there in the Bill of Rights.

I think this fixes my messed up threading, https://twitter.com/DebGoldenDC/status/1293374074723405825?s=19