KRAVITCH, Circuit Judge:
This action was brought on behalf of two elementary school students who allegedly were strip searched by a teacher and guidance counselor after having been accused of stealing money from a classmate. The district court concluded that defendants were entitled to summary judgment on all claims. In particular, the court granted the individual defendants summary judgment on plaintiffs’ § 1983 Fourth Amendment claims. We affirm all of the district court’s summary judgment orders, except for the grant of qualified immunity to defendants on the Fourth Amendment claims, which we reverse.
I.
In 1992, Cassandra Jenkins and Onieka McKenzie were eight-year-old second graders at Graham Elementary School in Tallade-ga, Aabama. On the afternoon of May 1, one of Cassandra’s and Onieka’s classmates told their teacher, Hilda Fannin, that $7 was missing from her purse. Another classmate told Fannin that Cassandra had taken the money and stashed it in Onieka’s backpack. After searching the backpack and finding no money, Fannin questioned Cassandra and Onieka in the hallway outside the classroom. The girls accused each other, as well as a male classmate, Anthony Jemison, of the theft.
As Fannin’s questioning of Cassandra, Onieka, and Anthony continued in the hallway, the school music teacher, Susannah Herring, approached. Upon being informed of the theft accusation, Herring took charge of the investigation. First, she instructed the three students to take off their shoes and socks. No money was revealed. Herring then summoned Melba Sirmon, a guidance counselor whose office was nearby. Herring and Sirmon took Cassandra and Onieka to the girls’ restroom.
Inside the restroom, Herring told Cassandra and Onieka to “check” their clothes for the money. According to Cassandra, Herring ordered them to go inside the stalls and come back out with their underpants down to their ankles.1 As Cassandra and Onieka entered separate stalls and locked the doors, Sirmon left the restroom to cheek on Anthony, who was waiting outside. Shortly after she returned, according to Cassandra, Cassandra and Onieka emerged from the stalls [1038]*1038with their underpants pulled down to their ankles. Herring asked them if they had found the money, and they replied that they had not. Sirmon allowed them to return to their stalls and pull their underpants back up.2
Herring and Sirmon then escorted Cassandra, Onieka, and Anthony to the office of the school principal, Crawford Nelson. After hearing Herring’s account of what had happened,3 Nelson interrogated the three children about the location of the stolen cash. Anthony claimed that the money was hidden behind a file cabinet and then, when nothing was found there, that it was stashed in a locker. Nelson concluded that Anthony had no idea where the money was and dismissed him.
From Nelson’s office, Herring and Sirmon took Cassandra and Onieka back to the restroom.4 Inside, Herring ordered the two girls to take off their dresses, which they did. Cassandra was wearing a slip; Onieka was wearing only underpants. Herring then instructed them to shake their dresses, and she shook the slip Cassandra was wearing. After nothing was found, Cassandra and Onieka were allowed to put their dresses back on. This account was corroborated by a witness. Joyce Merritt Shears, the parent of another student, was walking in the hallway past the girls’ restroom while Cassandra and Onieka were being searched. Shears heard children crying and an adult say either “remove your slip” or “hold up your slip.” Entering the restroom to investigate, Shears saw Cassandra and Onieka, “one in their panties and the other one in their slip.”
The Talladega City Board of Education (“Board”) conducted an investigation of the strip search. After a hearing, the Board concluded that Herring had committed a “gross error in judgment” regarding the manner in which she investigated the alleged theft; that Sirmon had erred in her judgment by assisting Herring, failing to notify the principal immediately, and not calling Cassandra’s and Onieka’s parents; and that Nelson had erred in his judgment by not calling the girls’ parents and failing to establish a uniform policy for dealing with theft in the school. Despite the superintendent’s recommendation that Herring be fired, the Board did not impose any serious sanctions.
Plaintiffs, on behalf of Cassandra and Onieka, filed a complaint against the Board and nine individual defendants (including Nelson, Herring, and Sirmon) in 1994, alleging, pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983, that they had been strip searched in violation of the Fourth Amendment, Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972,5 and also alleging violations of Alabama tort law. The district court initially dismissed all claims for money damages against all defendants, except for those against Herring and Sirmon in their individual capacities and those against the Board. Then, on its own initiative, the court entered an order stating that it was reconsidering whether Herring and Sirmon were entitled to qualified immunity for the allegedly unconstitutional search in light of recent Eleventh Circuit decisions. The court proceeded to grant summary judgment on [1039]*1039the basis of qualified immunity in favor of the individual defendants on the Fourth Amendment claim. In addition, the court granted summary judgment for all defendants on the Title VI and Title IX claims, finding no substantial evidence of discrimination based on race or gender; for the Board on the § 1983 Fourth Amendment claim, finding no basis for municipal liability; for all defendants on the claims for injunctive and declaratory relief, finding that the plaintiffs lacked standing to bring these claims; and for individual defendants on the state law claims, finding that the defendants were entitled to qualified immunity under Article I, § 14 of the Alabama Constitution. Plaintiffs now appeal.
II.
We affirm the grant of summary judgment for all defendants on the Title VI and Title IX claims, for the Board on the Fourth Amendment § 1983 claim, for all defendants on the claims for injunctive and declaratory relief, and for the individual defendants on the state law claims.6 This leaves the issue of § 1983 qualified immunity for the individual defendants on plaintiffs’ Fourth Amendment claims.
The district court granted Herring and Sirmon qualified immunity, concluding that Fourth Amendment law was not “clearly established” as applied to their conduct.7 We reverse the district court’s decision because Fourth Amendment law was sufficiently clear in 1992 that there could be no doubt that Herring’s and Sirmon’s actions (construing the evidence and ail reasonable inferences therefrom in the light most favorable to the plaintiffs at the summary judgment stage) were unconstitutional.
III.
Before reaching the merits, we wish to clarify some general qualified immunity issues that seem to have confused the district court and defendants in this case.
The Supreme Court’s qualified immunity doctrine attempts to strike a balance between two competing concerns: the necessity for constitutional damages actions against public officials because such actions “may offer the only realistic avenue for vindication of constitutional guarantees” and the need to limit the costs to individuals and society created by litigation against public officials— including diversion of official energies from pressing public issues, deterrence of able citizens from acceptance of public office, and “the danger that fear of being sued will ‘dampen the ardor of all but the most resolute, or the most irresponsible [public officials], in the unflinching discharge of their duties.’” Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 814, 102 S.Ct. 2727, 2736, 73 L.Ed.2d 396 (1982) (quoting Gregoire v. Biddle, 177 F.2d 579, 582 (2d Cir.1949), cert. denied, 339 U.S. 949, 70 S.Ct. 803, 94 L.Ed. 1363 (1950)).
In its effort to strike the optimal balance, the Supreme Court in Harlow v. Fitzgerald established an objective test for qualified immunity: government officials performing discretionary functions are immune from § 1983 liability for monetary damages “insofar as their conduct does not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known.” 457 U.S. 800, 817-19, 102 S.Ct. 2727, 2738, 73 L.Ed.2d 396 (1982). In Anderson v. Creighton, the Court explained when a right is “clearly established”:
The contours of the right must be sufficiently clear that a reasonable official would understand that what he is doing [1040]*1040violates that right. This is not to say that an official action is protected by qualified immunity unless the very action in question has previously been held unlawful, but it is to say that in the light of pre-existing law the unlawfulness must be apparent.
483 U.S. 635, 640, 107 S.Ct. 3034, 3039, 97 L.Ed.2d 523 (1987) (citations omitted).
These standards allow us to filter out the most culpable or least competent public officials and make them liable for damages, thereby striking the balance sought in Harlow by permitting the vast majority of government to operate free from panoptie judicial oversight or constitutional job descriptions while still retaining a viable avenue for vindication of constitutional guarantees.
Since Anderson, this court has devoted much effort to staking out an operational standard somewhere between the Anderson Court’s polar extremes: “in light of preexisting law the unlawfulness must be apparent,” but “the very action in question [need not have] previously been held unlawful.” Over-emphasizing either of the Anderson poles flouts the Supreme Court’s efforts to construct a meaningful doctrine of qualified immunity. To treat each set of facts as unique and legally indeterminate would make qualified immunity absolute by denying that any unlawful conduct violates rights that were “clearly established.” At the other extreme, relying on abstract, highly general formulations of rights would effectively abrogate immunity by declaring every violated right “clearly established.” After Anderson, then, this court has sought a stable equilibrium between these opposing pressures.
Although there is no doubt that qualified immunity law in this circuit has evolved in its application to some extent in the direction of more protection for government officials, this has simply been the result of implementing the Anderson Court’s clarification of the appropriate level of generality at which a right must be “clearly established” for purposes of qualified immunity. See Lassiter v. Alabama A & M Univ., 28 F.3d 1146, 1150 (11th Cir.1994) (en banc) (“The most common error we encounter ... occurs on this point: courts must not permit plaintiffs to discharge their burden by referring to general rules and to the violation of abstract ‘rights.’”) (citing Anderson, 483 U.S. at 637-41, 107 S.Ct. at 3038-39).
Some of our efforts, however, have been misinterpreted as a sea change in qualified immunity. For instance, the district court in this case originally concluded that Sirmon’s and Herring’s actions did violate clearly established Fourth Amendment law, but it felt obligated to reconsider sua sponte based on its reading of some recent Eleventh Circuit qualified immunity cases. See, e.g., Lassiter, 28 F.3d 1146.8
Notwithstanding Lassiter's admonition that the court was announcing no “[n]ew rules,” but merely “for emphasis ... restaffing] principles which do govern qualified immunity cases,” 28 F.3d at 1149, that opinion has been misconstrued as announcing a sweeping change. For instance, the statement in Lassiter that “[f]or qualified immunity to be surrendered, pre-existing law must dictate, that is, truly compel (not just suggest or allow or raise a question about), the conclusion for every like-situated, reasonable government agent that what defendant is doing violates federal law in the circumstances,” Lassiter, 28 F.3d at 1150, has been read by some to indicate that qualified immunity is due every official unless this court has addressed essentially identical facts in a previous case. But Lassiter merely rephrases the Anderson standard, “in the light of preexisting law the unlawfulness must be apparent.” Lassiter does not abrogate Anderson’s recognition that “the very action in question [need not have] previously been held unlawful” nor could it have.
Likewise, other cases have been misconstrued. We can all agree that “[i]f ease law, in factual terms, has not staked out a bright line, qualified immunity almost always protects the defendant,” Post v. City of Fort Lauderdale, 7 F.3d 1552, 1557 (11th Cir.1993), modified, 14 F.3d 583 (11th Cir.1994). [1041]*1041This is another restatement of the Anderson requirement that the law must be apparent, but it does not answer the question “how bright?” or define the set of cases gestured towards by “almost.” In other words, these recent cases have not eviscerated Anderson’s recognition that “the very action in question [need not have] previously been held unlawful.” Thus, the basic principles of qualified immunity doctrine remain unchanged.
The confusion over qualified immunity is exemplified by defendants’ apparent assumption that relevant law can be “clearly established” only when there exist cases with facts materially similar to those of the ease at hand, as evidenced by their insistence that qualified immunity is due here because this court has never addressed a factually similar case. This argument is false in at least two circumstances: those in which the official misconduct is more egregious than conduct of the same general type that has been deemed illegal in other cases9 and those rare cases in which application of the legal standard would necessarily lead reasonable officials in the defendant’s situation to but one inevitable conclusion. It is the latter we are most interested in here.
Lassiter explicitly left “open the possibility that occasionally the words of a federal statute or federal constitutional provision will be specific enough to establish the law applicable to particular circumstances clearly and to overcome qualified immunity even in the absence of case law.” Lassiter, 28 F.3d at 1150 n. 4. It, of course, follows that if a federal statute or federal constitutional provision can clearly establish the law in the absence of case law, the Supreme Court’s pronouncement of a constitutional test could also be specific enough to do so.
That the law can be clearly established where the application of a constitutional standard leads to an inevitable conclusion that the acts are unconstitutional should be obvious given the purposes of qualified immunity. If a government official with even the most rudimentary, not to say reasonable, understanding of relevant law would have no doubt that his conduct was unconstitutional or otherwise illegal, then it would be perverse to immunize him from liability simply because his behavior was more egregious than any on record or because this court never before faced a similar set of facts.
Our circuit recently applied this very reasoning. In McMillian v. Johnson, 88 F.3d 1554 (11th Cir.1996), the plaintiff contended that, by placing him on deathrow while he awaited trial, local officials had violated his due process right to be free from punishment as a pretrial detainee. The lack of cases with materially similar facts did not preclude the McMillian court from denying summary judgment to the defendants on qualified immunity grounds. The court found that the Supreme Court’s constitutional directive as set forth in Bell v. Wolfish, 441 U.S. 520, 99 S.Ct. 1861, 60 L.Ed.2d 447 (1979) — that officials cannot impose conditions on pretrial detainees with an intent to punish — would have put any reasonable official on notice that the acts alleged in McMillian Violated clearly established law:
[F]or the law to be clearly established, a court need not have found the very action in question unlawful; what is essential is that the action’s unlawfulness be apparent in light of pre-existing law. Jordan [v. Doe], 38 F.3d [1559,] 1566 [(11th Cir. [1042]*10421994)]. We do not view the absence of a case factually similar to the extraordinary allegations in this case as an indication that the law was not clearly established that confining a pretrial detainee on death row to punish him is unconstitutional. Bell’s ’prohibition on any pretrial punishment, defined to include conditions imposed with an intent to punish, should have made it obvious to all reasonable officials in [defendants’] place that holding [plaintiff] on death row to punish him before he was tried violated [his] due process rights.
McMillian, 88 F.3d at 1565 (emphasis added). Thus, McMillian held that, at least for purposes of the case before it, the Bell rule clearly established the law.
Defendants next argue that even if a constitutional standard might clearly establish the law in some circumstances, the relevant law can virtually never be clearly established by cases that employ balancing tests. (New Jersey v. T.L.O., 469 U.S. 325, 105 S.Ct. 733, 83 L.Ed.2d 720 (1985), the case governing application of the Fourth Amendment to school searches, uses a balancing test.) The premise appears to be that balancing tests, by their nature, do not stake out a bright enough line to put public officials on notice of when their conduct violates a constitutional right.
The .defendants’ premise is flawed. It is indisputable that cases applying the balane-ing test may well make its application to allegedly unconstitutional conduct entirely determinate.10 Thus, there never has been any doubt that public officials can be stripped of qualified immunity when, for instance, they conduct a warrantless search that could not reasonably be thought supported by probable cause or exigent circumstances.11 And, although it is true that the mere statement of a balancing test (or other flexible legal standard) will usually be insufficient to determine whether particular conduct is clearly illegal, such a test, like other legal standards or statutes, may be sufficient to clearly establish the law in some, albeit rare, circumstances. See Oladeinde v. City of Birmingham, 963 F.2d 1481, 1487 (11th Cir.1992) (concluding, without citing a materially similar case, that application of the balancing test in that case would lead to the “inevitable conclusion” that defendants violated the Constitution) (Edmondson, J.), cert. denied, 507 U.S. 987, 113 S.Ct. 1586, 123 L.Ed.2d 153 (1993).
It is, therefore, misleading to speak of a separate category of cases in which there is no “bright-line” rule that “puts the reasonable public [official] on notice of a constitutional violation,” but in which the official is nonetheless not entitled to qualified immunity when application of a balancing test “would lead to the inevitable conclusion” that the official’s conduct was unconstitutional. Dartland v. Metropolitan Dade County, 866 [1043]*1043F.2d 1321, 1323 (11th Cir.1989) (acknowledging a balancing test will lead to the inevitable conclusion that a defendant’s conduct violated clearly established law in some cases). If the facts of other cases applying the balancing test or the test itself leads to such an “inevitable conclusion,” then the “bright-line” has been drawn.
IV.
The qualified immunity question presented by this ease is whether Fourth Amendment law “clearly established” that the search of Cassandra and Onieka conducted by Herring and Sirmon was unconstitutional.12 The application of the Fourth Amendment to searches of public school students is13 governed by New Jersey v. T.L.O., 469 U.S. 325, 105 S.Ct. 733, 83 L.Ed.2d 720 (1985). T.L.O., a 14-year-old high school student, was spotted by a teacher smoking in the bathroom. When questioned by a school administrator, T.L.O. denied smoking in the bathroom and claimed that she did not smoke at all. The administrator demanded and opened T.L.O.’s purse, discovering a pack of cigarettes. Reaching into the purse for the cigarettes, the administrator noticed a package of rolling papers. The administrator, suspecting that further evidence of drug use might be found, proceeded to search the purse thoroughly, revealing marijuana and various implements of dealing the drug. 469 U.S. at 325-36, 105 S.Ct. at 735-36.
After deciding that the Fourth Amendment applies to searches of public school students, the Court held that the search of T.L.O.’s purse was not unreasonable. Balancing “the child’s interest in privacy” against “the substantial interest of teachers and administrators in maintaining discipline in the classroom and on school grounds,” id. at 338-39, 105 S.Ct. at 741, the Court concluded that the reasonableness of a school search was determined by a two-part inquiry — whether it was (1) justified at its inception and (2) permissible in scope — with no requirement of probable cause. Id. at 339-43, 105 S.Ct. at 742-43. In particular, the Court specified the following standards:
Under ordinary circumstances, a search of a student by a teacher or other school official will be “justified at its inception” when there are reasonable grounds for suspecting that the search will turn up evidence that the student has violated or is violating either the law or the rules of the school. Such a search will be permissible in its scope when the measures adopted are reasonably related to the objectives of the search and not excessively intrusive in light of the age and sex of the student and the nature of the infraction.
Id. at 341-42, 105 S.Ct. at 743.
We apply these precepts to the case at hand. In doing so, we note that this circuit, before May 1, 1992, had not had the opportunity to apply T.L.O.’s standards in factually similar circumstances. The lack of Eleventh Circuit ease law does not, however, preclude us from determining whether the Supreme Court’s directive itself would have led reasonable school officials to the inevitable conclusion that their behavior violated the Constitution.
We will assume that the searches of Cassandra and Onieka in this case comprised a single, step-by-step search that was justified at its inception.14 For the purposes of this [1044]*1044case, we will assume that their classmate’s accusation may have provided “reasonable grounds” for searching Onieka’s backpack and, perhaps, even for requiring the children to remove their shoes and socks. We will also assume that these first stages of the overall search were reasonable in scope. It is the following stages, the restroom searches, and their expansion in scope that create the glaring problem.
Under T.L.O., the two restroom searches in which Cassandra and Onieka were required to undress were unconstitutional unless they were “ ‘reasonably related in scope to the circumstances which justified the interference in the first place.’” T.L.O., 469 U.S. at 341, 105 S.Ct. at 743 (quoting Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 20, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 1879, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968)). More specifically, in order for the scope of these searches to be permissible, “the measures adopted” must have been “reasonably related to the objectives of the search and not excessively intrusive in light of the age and sex of the student and the nature of the infraction.” Id. at 342, 105 S.Ct. at 743.
Thus, T.L.O. requires us to consider several factors in determining whether the scope was permissible: whether there was a reasonable relationship between the scope of the search (the measures adopted) and the objectives of the search; the intrusiveness of the search in light of the age and sex of the student; and the intrusiveness of the search in light of the nature of the infraction.
To determine whether the scope of a search is reasonably related to its objectives, we must examine the measures adopted here. Strip searches are among the most intrusive of searches.15 This fact is self-evident. As this court, in the course of its most thorough consideration of the constitutionality of strip searching minors, has recognized: “It is axiomatic that a strip search represents a serious intrusion upon personal rights. In Mary Beth G. [v. City of Chicago, 723 F.2d 1263, 1272 (7th Cir.1983)], the court referred to strip searches as ‘demeaning, dehumanizing, undignified, humiliating, terrifying, unpleasant, embarrassing, repulsive, signifying degradation and submission.’ ” Justice v. City of Peachtree City, 961 F.2d 188, 192 (11th Cir.1992).16 Moreover, the perceived invasiveness and physical intimidation intrinsic to strip searches may be exacerbated for children. See Justice, 961 F.2d at 192 (“[ejhil-dren are especially susceptible to possible traumas from strip searches”) (internal quotation marks omitted). Consequently, for the extreme invasion of privacy inflicted by a strip search to be “reasonably related to the objectives of the search,” these objectives must carry tremendous weight.17
[1045]*1045We next look at the objectives of the search and whether they were reasonably related to the methods chosen, i.e., whether the search was “ ‘reasonably related in scope to the circumstances which justified the interference in the first place.’” T.L.O., 469 U.S. at 341, 105 S.Ct. at 743 (quoting Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 20, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 1879, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968)).18 In applying this rule in Terry, the Court determined whether the search was “confined in scope to an intrusion reasonably designed to discover” the items sought and “confined ... strictly to what was minimally necessary” to locate those items. Terry, 392 U.S. at 29-30, 88 S.Ct. at 1884-85.
We must decide, therefore, whether the extreme intrusiveness involved in the strip searches here was “reasonably related” to the objective of discovering the allegedly stolen cash. Because the possibility of finding the cash in the two restroom searches was slight (at best), we conclude that the extreme measures adopted here were not reasonably related to the objectives of the search.
A second-grader reported $7 missing. Her teacher never asked her whether she might have lost the money or forgotten that she spent it. Fannin simply asked another student whether she knew anything about the missing money. That student reported that Cassandra had taken the money and put it in Onieka’s backpack. Fannin never asked that student how she knew, whether she had seen the event, or, if not, who told her about it. And there is no evidence that Onieka or Cassandra had stolen anything before. The failure to locate the money in Onieka’s backpack, where it was reportedly stashed, casts further doubt on the reliability of the informant’s story and, thus, the justification for the investigation. Furthermore, Fannin did not check Cassandra’s bag or any other area of the room before handing the investigation over to Herring.
When Herring accepted responsibility for the investigation, she did not ask Fannin about any of the details, including who had originally accused the girls or how the accuser knew the girls had taken the money. • All she knew was that the girls had been accused of taking $7 and that they, in turn, accused each other and Anthony Jemison of stealing the cash. With only this evidence in hand and without seeking any specifics from the children about the theft, she made the girls and Anthony remove their shoes and socks.19 When the money was not found there, she proceeded, with Sirmon, to take the girls to the restroom to search them even though no one had reported that either of the girls had hidden the money in her underclothing and there was no evidence that the girls had ever hidden money or contraband in their clothing before. The entire restroom search was apparently premised on the fact that one of the girls had been to the restroom before the money was reported missing. If this were the reason for concluding the money was hidden in one of the girl’s underclothing, Sirmon and Herring might have had arguable, albeit slight, grounds for believing that a first search of that girl’s underclothing would lead to evidence of the theft. There were no grounds, however, for taking both girls to the restroom.
After finding nothing in the girls’ underpants during the first search, Sirmon and Herring took them to the restroom a second time. If the method chosen in the first restroom search was highly unlikely to lead to evidence, then requiring the girls to undress a second time was completely unlikely to end in discovery of the cash. Having looked in the girls’ underpants, the probability that the money could have been hidden anywhere else on the children’s persons (especially after a walk to and from the principal’s office) was almost nil. Thus, even at this stage of the inquiry it is difficult to believe that any reasonable school official could surmise that it was constitutionally permissible to conduct these two highly in[1046]*1046trusive searches where there was such a negligible possibility that any evidence of the infraction would be found. T.L.O., however, gives us further guidance.
Under T.L.O., the nature of the infraction is another factor to be weighed in determining the permissible intrusiveness or scope of a search. One can imagine the range of possible school-place infractions as a spectrum with the most serious infractions falling at one end. While reasonable school officials would disagree about exactly where the infraction at issue here might fall along the spectrum, the following generalizations are certain. It is obvious that an infraction that presents an imminent threat of serious harm — for example, possession of weapons, or other dangerous contraband — would be the most serious infractions in the school context.20 Thus, these offenses would exist at [1047]*1047one end of the spectrum. Thefts of valuable items or large sums of money would fall a little more toward the center of the spectrum. Thefts of small sums of money or less valuable items and possession of minor, non-dangerous contraband would fall toward the opposite extreme of the spectrum. Such infractions would seldom, and probably never, justify the most intrusive searches. It follows that the infraction at issue here, the theft of $7, while perhaps not a trespass to be taken lightly, is, nonetheless, an offense which would not justify a highly intrusive search, and certainly not where the likelihood of finding evidence of the offense was as weak as it was here.
T.L.O. also requires us to take the student’s age into consideration. The students in this case were extremely young, only second graders. The Supreme Court did not elaborate on how we should consider age. See, e.g., Cornfield, 991 F.2d at 1321 (discussing issue). Nevertheless, regardless of a student’s age, T.L.O. forbids school officials from undertaking the most intrusive of searches where the infraction is relatively minor and presents no threat of imminent danger and where it is highly unlikely that the search will turn up evidence of the infraction. To conclude otherwise would be to read T.L.O. such that it does not protect elementary school students at all.
Considered together, the factors identified in T.L.O. — the glaring disproportion between the objectives of the searches and the measures adopted and the trivial nature of the infraction — point unequivocally to the unreasonableness of the two restroom searches at issue here. Even if the T.L.O. reasonableness standard is indeterminate for a broad category of school searches, it indisputably prohibits strip searches of students in this situation.21 Sirmon and Herring, therefore, are not entitled to qualified immunity, because the T.L.O. standard would have led any reasonable school official in their circumstances to the inevitable conclusion that the conduct charged here violated the Constitution.
The line drawn in T.L.O. may not be bright enough to dictate the results of cases closer to the line, for example, cases in which there is a reasonable suspicion that a student has hidden on his or her person drugs or weapons.22 The facts presented at the summary judgment stage in the case now before us, however, are clearly far to the unconstitutional side of that line. Cassandra and Onie-ka were eight-year-old elementary school students. They were accused of stealing $7 that may or may not have been missing, solely on the basis of the accusation of a second-grade classmate; there was no evidence that they had ever before stolen money or hidden anything in their clothing. [1048]*1048Even if the girls had possessed the cash (which they apparently did not), their infraction would have threatened no imminent or serious harm. Nevertheless, even after investigations of Onieka’s backpack and both girls’ shoes and socks had revealed no money and without making any further inquiries into the matter, Herring and Sirmon twice forced Cassandra and Onieka to undress and submit to inspection. Reasonable teachers or school officials in their positions could not have believed that the Fourth Amendment, in light of T.L.O., would allow such a search. We conclude, based on the facts presented at the summary judgment stage, that Herring and Sirmon acted in blatant disregard of the Fourth Amendment. Consequently, they are not entitled to qualified immunity.
V.
The district court’s orders granting summary judgment for defendants Herring and Sirmon on the basis of qualified immunity from plaintiffs’ § 1983 Fourth Amendment claims are REVERSED. The district court’s other summary judgment orders in this case are AFFIRMED.