From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 28 Jun 1995 18:40:00 -0400

Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund
 Press Release

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Wednesday, June 28, 1995

Federal Marshals Held Liable for Unlawful Strip Searches of ACT UP Members

Activists' 92 Fourth Amendment Rights Were Violated 

Ten members from the AIDS activist group ACT UP, who were arrested for
demonstrating outside a Food and Drug Administration office in 1989, were
unlawfully strip searched by United States Marshals in Oregon, a federal
appeals court ruled late last week.

The Constitution does not permit non-violent protestors to be intimidated by
strip searches, said Suzanne B. Goldberg, staff attorney at Lambda Legal
Defense and Education Fund, a national lesbian and gay legal organization
which represented the demonstrators.   This ruling reminds law enforcement
officials that they will be held accountable when they infringe upon a
person's civil liberties. Members of ACT UP and other non-violent political
groups should not be singled out by government officials for invasive
inspection or surveillance.

Federal monitoring of ACT UP made headlines recently as government
surveillance files of the activist organization were made public.

In an unanimous decision made public this morning, the three-judge panel 
of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that the government
marshals who ordered and conducted the strip searches had no reasonable
basis to do so, violating the demonstrators' Fourth Amendment right to be
free from unreasonable searches and seizures.  The appeals court sent the
case back to the trial court to determine damages and liability stemming
from the invasive search.  

The activists from ACT UP/Portland (the Oregon chapter of the AIDS
Coalition to Unleash Power) were arrested on February 27, 1989 for
creating a noisy disturbance in the hallway outside of the FDA's local
office.  They were protesting the agency's failure to approve the use
of several experimental drugs to treat AIDS and related opportunistic
infections. 

Prior to being booked and released from the holding area in the federal
courthouse building, the arrested demonstrators-four women and six men-
were subjected to what the court described as an invasive and humiliating
strip search.  The women were ordered to lift their breasts and to rotate
in a circle while being visually inspected in a private cell.  The six
men, who were each ordered to remove all clothing, were subjected to a
full body inspection in clear view of other marshals and detainees. 

Under the U.S. Marshal Service's written policy, strip searches are
prohibited unless there is reason to believe that the prisoner may be
carrying contraband or is considered suicidal or an escape risk.  The
appellate court, overturning a 1993 lower court ruling, soundly rejected 
the marshalss contention that they had reason to believe the protestors
were carrying weapons and posing a threat.

The marshals' flimsy explanation would have given law enforcement carte
blanche to strip search whomever they wished, added Goldberg.

Lambda represents the  AIDS activists (Michael Ambrosino, Richard Dryden,
Lori Kohler, Michael Petrelis, Catherine Smith, Mindy Spatt, Steve Squires,
Kelly Tadlock, Jesse Tepper, and Tadd Tobias) along with its cooperating
attorney Tom Steenson from the Portland firm of Steenson & Schuman, and
cooperating attorneys from the New York firm of Brown Raysman & Millstein
(ACT UP/Portland v. Bagley, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, 
No. 93-35592.)

Press Contact: Denny Lee, (212) 995-8585