# Florence v. Board of Chosen Freeholders of County of Burlington > Supreme Court of the United States · April 2, 2012 · 566 U.S. 318 URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9485644 ## Case - **Full name:** FLORENCE v. BOARD OF CHOSEN FREEHOLDERS OF COUNTY OF BURLINGTON Et Al. - **Court:** Supreme Court of the United States - **Decided:** April 2, 2012 - **Citations:** 566 U.S. 318; 132 S. Ct. 1510; 182 L. Ed. 2d 566; 2012 U.S. LEXIS 2712 - **Precedential status:** Published - **Opinion:** Concurrence by Roberts - **Judges:** Kennedy, Roberts, Scalja, Alito, Thomas, Breyer, Ginsburg, Sotomayor, Kagan - **Cited by:** 684 later opinions in the Frix Law Library ## Citator (automated) - No negative treatment found by the automated citator. That is not the same as a confirmation that the case is good law; read the citing cases. - Full citator and citing cases: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9485644 ## How later opinions describe it (automated extraction) - holding that county’s search procedures did not 17 violate the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments because there was a reasonable balance 18 between inmate privacy and the needs of the institution, and rejecting petitioner’s proposal 19 – that new detainees not arrested for serio… - holding that strip 17 searches involving the removal of pretrial detainee’s clothing and visual inspection of his 18 ears, nose, mouth, hair, scalp, skin, “other body openings,” genitalia, and rectal cavity, 19 “regardless of the circumstances of the arrest, the suspected offe… - stating that the term “strip search” is imprecise and can include an “instruction to remove clothing while an officer observes from a distance of, say, five feet or more” or “directing” individu als to run their fingers through their own hair, to raise their arms, or expose th… - explaining the limits of Florence’s ruling and commenting that “[t]his case does not require the Court to rule on the types of searches that would be reasonable in instances where, for example, a detainee will be held without 56 assignment to the general jail population and wi… - finding that a correctional facility policy of conducting strip searches of persons arrested for minor offenses as a routine part of the intake process "struck a reasonable balance between inmate privacy and the needs of the institutions” and did not violate the Fourth Amendment ## Opinion text Chief Justice Roberts, concurring. I join the opinion of the Court. As with Justice Alito, however, it is important for me that the Court does not foreclose the possibility of an exception to the rule it announces. Justice Kennedy explains that the circumstances before it do not afford an opportunity to consider that possibility. Ante, at 339. Those circumstances include the facts that Florence was detained not for a minor traffic offense but instead pursuant to a warrant for his arrest, and that there was apparently no alternative, if Florence were to be detained, to holding him in the general jail population. Factual nuances have not played a significant role as this case has been presented to the Court. Both courts below regarded acknowledged factual disputes as “immaterial” to their conflicting dispositions, 621 F. 3d 296, 300 (CA3 2010), and before this Court Florence challenged suspicionless strip searches “no matter what the circumstances,” Pet. for Cert. i. The Court makes a persuasive case for the general applicability of the rule it announces. The Court is nonetheless wise to leave open the possibility of exceptions, to ensure that we “not embarrass the future.” Northwest Airlines, Inc. v. Minnesota, 322 U. S. 292, 300 (1944) (Frankfurter, J.). --- Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9485644. Public record. Not legal advice.