The court of appeals, en banc, reversed a judgment of the district court. The court held that a non-emergency cross-gender jailhouse strip search of a male pretrial detainee’s genital area by a female training cadet was unreasonable as a matter of law and violated the detainee’s Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable searches.
Charles Byrd was a pretrial detainee in a minimum security facility in Arizona. Based on the occurrence of several fights and the suspicion of contraband in the facility, Maricopa County jail officials ordered a search of Byrd’s entire housing unit of approximately 90 inmates. It was undisputed that no emergency existed.
