Julie Baker-Dennis reports the latest development in a lawsuit previously noted on this site:
The 11th Circuit revived three students’ claims that employees of Florida’s Valencia College violated their right to free speech and protection against unreasonable searches by pressuring them to undergo transvaginal ultrasounds.
The three former sonography students who attended the public college sued the school and several of its employees in May 2015 after the employees allegedly retaliated against them for initially refusing to undergo transvaginal ultrasounds as part of their education. Sonography is a type of medical imaging using ultrasound.
Although two of the students eventually submitted to the invasive procedure, they claim that the ultrasound equates to an unconstitutional search.
Read more on Courthouse News. While the court’s discussion of the speech issue is important, I suspect many readers will definitely want to read the section of the decision concerning whether the ultrasounds constituted a “search” under the Fourth Amendment. Of note, and recognizing that sister circuits may disagree, the court points out that nothing in the Fourth Amendment limits the protection to searches that are only done for “investigative” or “administrative” purposes.