The part in bold is missing from several articles I've looked at.
Yeah, I'd gotten the impression they'd stopped him while he was driving. The search still wouldn't have been legal, though, since (A) he couldn't have been reaching for a weapon in the car while he was locked in the back of the cruiser, and (B) they couldn't find anything in the car that would be evidence of the crime they arrested him for.
But the search, as described in your quote, doesn't even make sense from a broad probable cause angle. I'm surprised it went to the Supreme Court. Usually, the cops stop you and, if they feel like it, they
ask to search your car. Most people won't say no. Sometimes they're sneakier and they ask if they would find anything illegal if they did search your car. If you say yes, well, duh, they have probable cause. If you say no, then you have less of an excuse not to let them search your car. (They also often threaten you at that point by saying that it's illegal to lie to an officer during an investigation.)
Legally, if you refuse to let them search your car, that doesn't establish probable cause, but, psychologically, we all know it does, and most people suspect that, at that point, the cops will find some other excuse.
As for the school thing . . . it seems to me to be an issue of the boundaries of
loco parentis. As a parent, you can strip-search your kid, although it might be a bad idea in many cases. As a school administrator, that's some damned risky territory. I can even imagine a principal telling a kid to either strip for the school nurse or else be suspended for the day, but actually strip-searching the kid yourself? No way.
The SCOTUS justices lose 10 billion points for arguing that the search was justified because kids might hide stuff in their underwear. That's not how civil rights work, man. There is not probable cause just because you are
capable of committing a crime. Kennedy and Breyer argue outright that school officials don't need to have any reason to suspect that the kid might've hidden something in his or her underwear . . . because it's something kids might do. It's "a logical thing" to expect, because kids do that kind of thing. Generalizing guilt based on group association? Screw you.
Souter argues that it's better to embarrass one student than sicken or kill several. Yeah, but you're setting a precedent to allow the needless and useless embarrassment of
all students.
The Justice Department seems to have the right idea on this one. The court seems to be way off, but maybe they're just screwing with us -- they haven't ruled yet, right?
And if it were my kid, you'd better believe that school official would not be a school official for long or ever be one again. Personally, I'd consider it a sexual assault on the kid.