PUBLISHED

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT

No. 13-7655

MICHAEL CANTLEY, and; FLOYD TETER, on behalf of themselves 

and on behalf of a Class of others similarly situated,

 Plaintiffs - Appellants,

v.

THE WEST VIRGINIA REGIONAL JAIL AND CORRECTIONAL FACILITY 

AUTHORITY, and; TERRY L. MILLER, both individually and in 

his official capacity as Executive Director of the West 

Virginia Regional Jail and Correctional Facility Authority 

and; JOSEPH A. DELONG, both individually and in his 

official capacity as Acting Executive Director of the West 

Virginia Regional Jail and Correctional Facility Authority 

and; LARRY PARSONS, both individually and in his official 

capacity as Executive Director of the West Virginia 

Regional Jail and Correctional Facility Authority,

 Defendants - Appellees. 

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern 

District of West Virginia, at Huntington. Robert C. Chambers,

Chief District Judge. (3:09-cv-00758)

Argued: September 17, 2014 Decided: November 14, 2014

Before WILKINSON, SHEDD, and WYNN, Circuit Judges.

Affirmed by published opinion. Judge Wilkinson wrote the 

opinion, in which Judge Shedd and Judge Wynn joined. Judge Wynn 

wrote a separate concurring opinion.
2

ARGUED: Elmer Robert Keach, III, LAW OFFICES OF ELMER ROBERT 

KEACH III, PC, Amsterdam, New York, for Appellants. David J. 

Mincer, BAILEY & WYANT, PLLC, Charleston, West Virginia, for 

Appellees. ON BRIEF: D. Aaron Rihn, ROBERT PEIRCE & ASSOCIATES, 

PC, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Nicholas Migliaccio, WHITFIELD, 

BRYSON & MASON, LLP, Washington, D.C.; Daniel Karon, GOLDMAN, 

SCARLATO, KARON & PENNY, PC, Cleveland, Ohio, for Appellants.
3

WILKINSON, Circuit Judge:

This case involves the visual strip-searching and delousing 

of two men held in two different jails in West Virginia. 

Plaintiffs Michael Cantley and Floyd Teter brought a 42 U.S.C. 

§ 1983 action for damages and equitable relief against the West 

Virginia Regional Jail and Correctional Facility Authority 

(“WVRJA”) and three former and current Executive Directors of 

the WVRJA. The WVRJA is the state agency tasked with overseeing 

the ten regional jails, each of which receives arrestees pending 

their arraignments when local courts are not immediately 

available. Plaintiffs challenge the constitutionality of the 

strip searches and delousing procedure.

The district court granted defendants’ motion for summary 

judgment and denied plaintiffs’ cross-motion for summary 

judgment on the grounds that the strip searches and delousing 

procedure did not violate the Fourth Amendment. Cantley v. W. 

Va. Reg’l Jail & Corr. Facility Auth., 2013 WL 5531855 (S.D. W. 

Va. Oct. 4, 2013). We now affirm, albeit on alternate grounds 

with respect to plaintiff Teter. See, e.g., Ellis v. La.-Pac. 

Corp., 699 F.3d 778, 786 (4th Cir. 2012) (“This court is 

entitled to affirm the court's judgment on alternate grounds, if 

such grounds are apparent from the record.”) (citation and 

internal quotation marks omitted).
4

I.

Because the facts surrounding the visual strip searches of 

the plaintiffs are materially different, we consider them each 

in turn. Plaintiff Cantley was arrested in September 2008 for 

violating a domestic violence protection order. He was arraigned 

before a magistrate, who committed him to the Western Regional 

Jail, one of ten in the WVRJA system. Upon entering the jail, 

Cantley was pat-searched, given a brief medical examination, 

booked, and placed in a holding cell. During the booking

process, Cantley cursed at the officers and threatened them. 

Once in the holding cell, he kicked the cell door insistently 

until officers put him in a restraint chair. Over the course of 

an hour and a half, Cantley repeatedly attempted to get out of 

the chair, at one point grabbing at a nurse’s hand and at 

another threatening to strangle an officer.

After Cantley had calmed down and been released from the 

chair, he was strip-searched and deloused by a single male 

officer. The officer instructed Cantley to remove his clothes, 

“rais[e] his scrotum, bend[] over, and cough[].” Cantley v. W. 

Va. Reg’l Jail & Corr. Facility Auth., 2013 WL 5531855, at *5 

(S.D. W. Va. Oct. 4, 2013). At no point did the officer touch 

Cantley. The officer then used a spray bottle to apply delousing 

solution to Cantley’s body. After showering, Cantley dressed in 

a prison uniform and was escorted to a holding cell, where he 
5

remained until he was moved to a cell in the general housing 

area.1

The district court held that, under Florence v. Board of 

Chosen Freeholders of County of Burlington, 132 S. Ct. 1510 

(2012), the strip search of Cantley was constitutional. Cantley, 

2013 WL 5531855, at *5. In the alternative, the court held that 

Cantley’s behavior and his arrest for violating a domestic 

violence protection order “justified . . . searching Mr. Cantley 

to ensure [the officers’] personal safety and the safety of 

others in the facility.” Id. at *5 n.9.

In Florence, the Supreme Court held that “every detainee 

who will be admitted to the general population [of a jail] may 

be required to undergo a close visual inspection while 

undressed.” 132 S. Ct. at 1513. Before he was strip-searched, 

Cantley appeared before a magistrate, who ordered him committed 

to the jail’s general population. Florence squarely covers the 

strip search of Cantley. We thus affirm the district court’s 

grant of defendants’ summary judgment motion on Cantley’s strip 

search claim on the grounds that the search was constitutional.

 1 Cantley also alleged that on several other occasions he 

was arrested and then strip-searched and deloused before 

presentment. The district court held that those allegations 

were insufficiently pled. Cantley, 2013 WL 5531855, at *4 n.4. 

Cantley has provided us with no reason to overturn that ruling, 

and we decline to do so.
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II.

A.

Plaintiff Teter was arrested between 3:00 and 4:00 p.m. on 

February 19, 2010, for obstructing an officer and putting debris 

in the road. He was taken to a hospital for a medical 

examination, and then fingerprinted at the Preston County 

Courthouse. He did not appear before a magistrate. From the

courthouse he was brought to the Tygart Valley Regional Jail at 

10:15 p.m., where he was pat-searched, examined by a nurse, and 

booked. After that, Teter was escorted to a shower room, where 

he was strip-searched and deloused by a single male officer. The

officer instructed him to remove his clothes and “spread his 

legs, lift his testicles, turn around, bend over, and spread his 

cheeks.” Cantley v. W. Va. Reg’l Jail & Corr. Facility Auth., 

2013 WL 5531855, at *6 (S.D. W. Va. Oct. 4, 2013). At no point 

did the officer touch Teter. The officer then used a garden 

sprayer to apply delousing solution to the hairy areas of 

Teter’s body.

After showering and dressing in a prison uniform, Teter was 

placed in a holding cell, where he was joined by another 

arrestee. Eventually, the two arrestees were moved to a smaller 

cell in expectation of the arrival of a larger group of 

detainees, who were to be placed in the larger holding cell. In 

the morning, Teter was taken out of the holding cell and 
7

escorted through the general population housing unit -- where 

committed prisoners live -- to the video conferencing room, 

where he appeared before a magistrate via video connection. 

(Individuals arrested later in the day or in the evening often 

do not appear before a magistrate until the next morning.) The 

magistrate ordered Teter released on bond at 9:00 a.m. All told, 

Teter spent almost eleven hours in Tygart Valley.

The officer who strip-searched Teter testified that pat 

searches have turned up knives, brass knuckles, ammunition,

pieces of metal, lighters, cell phones, and all types of drugs. 

He further testified that he has found as much contraband as the 

result of strip searches as from the pat searches. Strip 

searches have uncovered drugs, lighters, matches, and 

cigarettes; the contraband is sometimes taped to the arrestee’s 

body or hidden in a balloon in the rectum.

The holding area at Tygart Valley has six cells. Because of 

overcrowding in the housing unit, however, officers generally 

only have use of two of the cells for holding pre-arraignment 

arrestees. As a result, officers only separate arrestees by sex 

instead of by seriousness of the charges. Up to fifteen 

individuals may be held in a single holding cell. At the time 

Teter was arrested, Tygart Valley conducted strip searches of 

every arrestee who came in, regardless of arraignment status or 

seriousness of the charge. After blanket strip searches were 
8

suspended in 2011, there were at least two instances of drug use 

in the holding cells.

The district court found that the strip search of Teter 

“struck a reasonable balance between the need to provide safety 

and security at the facility and Mr. Teter’s privacy interests” 

and thus held that the search was constitutional. Id. at *10.

B.

The doctrine of qualified immunity protects defendants in 

§ 1983 suits from the burden of going to trial where the 

“conduct [at issue] does not violate clearly established 

statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person 

would have known.” Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 818 

(1982). A defendant is entitled to judgment if either “the facts 

. . . [do not] make out a violation of a constitutional right”

or if the law was not “‘clearly established’ at the time of 

defendant’s alleged misconduct.” Pearson v. Callahan, 555 U.S. 

223, 232 (2009). We may address either prong of this analysis 

first, id. at 236, and we find it unnecessary to reach the 

constitutional merits of the strip search of Teter.

The law is “clearly established” only if “‘the contours of 

a right are sufficiently clear’ that every ‘reasonable official 

would have understood that what he is doing violates that 

right.’” Ashcroft v. al-Kidd, 131 S. Ct. 2074, 2083 (2011) 

(quoting Anderson v. Creighton, 483 U.S. 635, 640 (1987)) 
9

(alterations omitted). We examine whether the law was clearly 

established as of the time the allegedly unlawful action 

occurred. Anderson, 483 U.S. at 640. In making our inquiry, we 

“‘ordinarily need not look beyond the decisions of the Supreme 

Court, this court of appeals, and the highest court of the state 

in which the case arose.’” Lefemine v. Wideman, 672 F.3d 292, 

298 (4th Cir. 2012) (quoting Edwards v. City of Goldsboro, 178 

F.3d 231, 251 (1999)), vacated on other grounds, 133 S. Ct. 9 

(2012). Although the law does not require that there be a prior 

case identical to the case at bar for the law to be clearly 

established, see Hope v. Pelzer, 536 U.S. 730, 741 (2002), 

“existing precedent must have placed the statutory or 

constitutional question beyond debate.” Al-Kidd, 131 S. Ct. at 

2083.

Plaintiff contends that Logan v. Shealy, 660 F.2d 1007 (4th 

Cir. 1981), clearly established that the strip search of a prearraignment arrestee without individualized suspicion is 

unconstitutional. But this case is quite different from Logan. 

Teter was strip-searched in a private room in the presence of 

one officer. Logan was strip-searched in a holding room with a 

transparent window; she was “exposed to the general view of 

persons known to be in the vicinity.” Logan, 660 F.2d at 1014. 

The district court recognized that there were significant 

security justifications for searching Teter and similar 
10

arrestees. Cantley, 2013 WL 5531855, at *7, *9-*10. In Logan, 

there was no credible justification for the strip search. Teter 

was strip-searched prior to being placed in a holding cell, 

where he might interact with up to fifteen other arrestees, and 

led through the housing unit to the videoconferencing room. He 

ultimately spent almost eleven hours in Tygart Valley. Logan, on 

the other hand, was strip-searched when she was soon to leave 

the facility, and there is no mention of her interacting with 

other arrestees. Logan, 660 F.2d at 1010. She spent a little 

more than two-and-a-half hours in total at the detention 

facility. Id. at 1009-10.

Logan did not clearly establish that it was 

unconstitutional for a correctional officer to conduct a visual 

strip search in a private room of an arrestee, who was to be 

held until the next morning in a holding cell with possibly a 

dozen or more other arrestees. Because the law was not clearly 

established, the defendants are entitled to qualified immunity 

for the strip search of Teter.2

 2 Because the Supreme Court issued Florence v. Board of 

Chosen Freeholders of County of Burlington, 132 S. Ct. 1510 

(2012), after the search of Teter took place, that decision 

does not demonstrate either that the law was clearly established 

or that it was not.
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III.

The district court held that the delousing of both Cantley 

and Teter was constitutional and granted summary judgment on the 

delousing claims. Cantley v. W. Va. Reg’l Jail & Corr. Facility 

Auth., 2013 WL 5531855, at *13 (S.D. W. Va. Oct. 4, 2013). We 

affirm the grant of summary judgment, but on the grounds that it 

was not clearly established that the delousing policy was 

unconstitutional.3

Plaintiffs argue that Amaechi v. West, 237 F.3d 356 (4th 

Cir. 2001), clearly established that the delousing of both 

Cantley and Teter was an unreasonable search or seizure. We 

disagree. In Amaechi, an officer physically searched Amaechi, 

who had been arrested for a noise violation, in public. The male 

officer “squeezed her hips, and inside her opened dress, 

‘swiped’ one ungloved hand, palm up, across her bare vagina, at 

which time the tip of his finger slightly penetrated Amaechi’s 

genitals,” and then “knead[ed]” her buttocks with his hand. 

Amaechi, 237 F.3d at 359. This sexually abusive search “took 

place directly in front of the Amaechis’ townhouse, where the 

other police officers, Amaechi’s husband, her five children, and 

 3 The Supreme Court did not expressly reach the delousing 

issue in Florence v. Board of Chosen Freeholders of County of 

Burlington, simply commenting that “[t]he danger of introducing 

lice or contagious infections” into a detention facility “is 

well documented.” 132 S. Ct. 1510, 1518 (2012).
12

all of her neighbors had the opportunity to observe.” Id. at 

360.

The delousing of Cantley and Teter, while undoubtedly 

unwelcome, cannot compare to the seriousness of the intrusion in 

Amaechi. The male officer in Amaechi manhandled the naked female 

plaintiff in public “without any apparent justification.” Id. at 

361. By contrast, the delousing of Cantley and Teter was done in 

a private room with only one officer, who was of the same sex, 

and it did not entail the officer himself touching either 

plaintiff. Furthermore, the jails have a significant “interest 

in reducing the outbreak of lice.” Cantley, 2013 WL 5531885, at 

*12. In short, at the time of the delousing, “existing precedent 

[did not] place[] the statutory or constitutional question 

beyond debate.” Ashcroft v. al-Kidd, 131 S. Ct. 2074, 2083

(2011). The defendants thus are entitled to qualified immunity 

for the delousing of Cantley and Teter.

IV.

In holding that the defendants’ actions did not violate the 

Constitution and granting the defendants’ motion for summary 

judgment, the district court necessarily denied the plaintiffs’ 

prayer for injunctive and declaratory relief. Cantley v. W. Va. 

Reg’l Jail & Corr. Facility Auth., 2013 WL 5531855, at *13 (S.D. 

W. Va. Oct. 4, 2013). Although we have affirmed the district 

court’s grant of summary judgment on the alternative grounds of 
13

qualified immunity, we conclude that injunctive and declaratory 

relief in this case would be premature.

A plaintiff seeking injunctive relief must satisfy these 

four factors: “[1] that he is likely to succeed on the merits, 

[2] that he is likely to suffer irreparable harm in the absence 

of preliminary relief, [3] that the balance of equities tips in 

his favor, and [4] that an injunction is in the public 

interest.” Winter v. Natural Res. Def. Council, Inc., 555 U.S. 

7, 20 (2008) (preliminary injunction); see eBay Inc. v. 

MercExchange, L.L.C., 547 U.S. 388, 391 (2006) (articulating a 

similar test for permanent injunctions). “[A]ll four 

requirements must be satisfied.” Real Truth About Obama, Inc. v. 

FEC, 575 F.3d 342, 346 (4th Cir. 2009), vacated on other 

grounds, 559 U.S. 1089 (2010).

A court should not impose an injunction lightly, as it is 

“an extraordinary remedy involving the exercise of a very farreaching power, which is to be applied only in the limited 

circumstances which clearly demand it.” Centro Tepeyac v. 

Montgomery Cnty., 722 F.3d 184, 188 (4th Cir. 2013) (en banc) 

(citation and internal quotation marks omitted). Issuing a 

declaratory judgment is similarly within the court’s discretion. 

Wilton v. Seven Falls Co., 515 U.S. 277, 286-87 (1995). It is 

well-settled that remedies must be tailored to violations, see, 

e.g. Winter, 555 U.S. at 32-33, and injunctive relief would not 
14

appear an appropriate course where, as we note infra, WVRJA’s 

policies already do not permit, absent some particularized 

suspicion, strip searches conducted on pre-arraignment detainees 

held outside the general population.

The application of equitable power is in part a pragmatic 

exercise as the standards set forth in Winter and eBay

illustrate. Before a court uses its equitable powers to enter 

the field of institutional governance in this area, correctional 

authorities deserve the chance to absorb the implications of 

Florence v. Board of Chosen Freeholders of County of Burlington, 

132 S. Ct. 1510 (2012), and to take steps to ensure that their 

policies conform to that decision. Although Florence may not 

have reached the precise constitutional questions presented by 

the case at bar, the decision altered the legal playing field 

for detention facilities across the nation. Specifically, taking 

the varying opinions in their totality, Florence made clear that 

blanket strip searches prior to arraignment of arrestees not 

designated for assignment to the detention facility’s general 

population are constitutionally suspect in the absence of some 

particularized justification.

Florence did, however, note that correctional officers 

“must have substantial discretion to devise reasonable solutions 

to the problems they face.” 132 S. Ct. at 1515 (detailing the 

different difficulties that large and small detention facilities 
15

may encounter). Even before Florence came down, the WVRJA had 

ordered Tygart Valley to cease any blanket practice of stripsearching and delousing pre-arraignment arrestees not designated 

for the general jail or prison population. See J.A. 751-52 

(internal Tygart Valley order); J.A. 1574 (e-mail order from 

WVRJA to jail administrators). The WVRJA maintains that its 

written policies do not allow its officers to require, without 

particularized suspicion, strip searches of these arrestees. 

While the distance between a front office directive and its 

implementation in the field can be a long one, we think it 

premature at this point to draft an equitable decree without 

affording some prior opportunity for West Virginia 

administrators to apply their own experience in complying with 

Florence and the shifting boundaries of the law in this area.

The searches of the type conducted here are “undoubtedly 

humiliating and deeply offensive to many.” Florence, 132 S. Ct. 

at 1524 (Alito, J., concurring). At the same time, correctional 

authorities have an unquestionably legitimate interest in 

limiting the influx into their facilities of weapons and drugs, 

whose chief risk is to the physical safety and well-being of 

other arrestees themselves. Id. at 1519-20 (majority opinion). 

The Supreme Court has struck the balance in this difficult area 

by questioning whether “indiscriminate strip searching of 

detainees held outside of the general population” is 
16

constitutional. West v. Murphy, No. 13-2014, slip op. at 19 (4th 

Cir. 2014) (Wynn, J., concurring). Conforming its policies to 

the directives of the Court would seem destined for high 

placement on any list of administrative priorities, and we trust 

there will be no absence of diligence in the effort.

V.

For the reasons stated, we affirm the judgment of the 

district court.

AFFIRMED
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WYNN, Circuit Judge, concurring:

The majority opinion does not reach the precise question of 

whether the strip search conducted on Floyd Teter was 

unconstitutional, but it does cast serious doubt on the legality 

of similar searches going forward. See ante at 14. In my view, 

strip searching pre-arraignment detainees who are held outside 

the general population of a detention facility is 

unconstitutional absent reasonable suspicion. See Florence v. 

Bd. of Chosen Freeholders of Cnty. of Burlington, 132 S. Ct. 

1510, 1523 (2012) (Roberts, C.J., concurring); id. at 1524 

(Alito, J., concurring); id. at 1525 (Breyer, J., joined by 

Ginsburg, Sotomayor, and Kagan, JJ., dissenting). I agree with 

the majority that corrections administrators would be wise to 

take into account recent changes in the legal landscape 

governing strip searches when crafting policy in this area, 

particularly in light of the varying opinions in Florence. See

ante at 14.