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The meaning of the 4th Amendment comes from unlawful searches and seizures. For example, the 4th Amendment protects people from the unlawful search and seizure by police of their persons, their homes, and their belongings. If an officer violates the 4th Amendment, the victim can sue for wrongful arrest, among other things. To explore this concept, consider the following 4th Amendment definition.

Noun

Origin

September 25, 1789

The 4th Amendment is the amendment to the U.S. Constitution that protects American citizens from unlawful searches and seizures. What this means is that the police cannot arrest an individual without a warrant or probable cause, and they cannot take a persons home or property either without valid reason. Unfortunately, 4th Amendment examples of violations happen every day in the U.S. In many of these cases, the victim will sue the police upon his release from prison, and/or to reclaim his property.

There is a lot of debate regarding the proper requirements of the 4th Amendment, and it has to do with the definition of reasonable, and probable cause. In most cases, there is a strict requirement that law enforcement have a search warrant before searching, though in some specific instances, probable cause to believe a suspect is doing or hiding something illegal is enough.

Probable cause that allows police to search a persons belongings or person includes such things as the strong smell of marijuana emanating from a car a police officer has just stopped. This would give the officer reasonable belief that there is an illegal drug in the vehicle, and therefore probable cause to search the vehicle and the drivers person as well.

Ultimately, the 4th Amendment is in the Constitution to protect Americans rights. It is there to protect people from the governments intrusion upon their lives unless the government has a good reason to intrude.

An unreasonable search and seizure is a search and seizure that invades a persons privacy. For instance, searches of peoples garbage are not 4th Amendment examples of unreasonable search and seizure because the individual put the bags at the curb. Once the garbage bags are on the side of a public road, they are accessible to everyone from animals and children, to scavengers and snoops. So, if the police go through a persons garbage and find incriminating evidence, this is not an instance of an unreasonable search and seizure.

This is also the reason why a person who consents to a search or voluntarily provides evidence to the police should not have a reasonable expectation of privacy. He is inviting others to explore what he has to offer. Therefore, it is not unreasonable for those people to dig deeper and potentially uncover more information.

The 4th Amendment states that one way in which the police can conduct a reasonable search is to obtain a legitimate warrant. The warrant must describe the place the police wish to search, as well as the people they intend to arrest and the property they intend to seize. Another way they can conduct a reasonable search is to require that the search meets the parameters of an exception to the rule requiring warrants.

Essentially, the way to define a reasonable search is to compare the governments interests with a persons reasonable expectation of privacy. For instance, examples of 4th Amendment violations are less likely if a person is guilty of a violent crime. If someone commits a serious crime, he should not expect to enjoy his privacy for very long before the authorities catch up with him.

The term probable cause refers to a legitimate belief that a person has committed a crime or will commit a crime in the future. For a police officer to have probable cause, he must possess enough information about the situation to support his belief that the person he suspects is actually committing, or will commit, a crime. It is not enough to simply suspect someone of a crime. For probable cause to exist, the officer must have factual proof.

Courts rely on probable cause to determine whether a defendant committed a crime. To do this, they measure whether an average person with a reasonable level of intelligence would believe that the evidence provided is enough to prove that the defendant is guilty of the charges against him. The ways in which an individual can come to such a conclusion include:

The phrase fruit of the poisonous tree refers, in the legal sense, to evidence the police obtain illegally, and then try to use against a defendant to build their case. For example, 4th Amendment examples of violations may include officers coercing, or forcing, a suspect to confess to a crime he did not commit, simply to stop the officers from grilling him for hours on end. The phrase fruit of the poisonous tree can refer to any evidence the police obtain illegally, including through illegal wiretaps or after arresting someone without a warrant.

There are exceptions to the fruit of the poisonous tree rule, and these exceptions have a name: inevitable discovery. Inevitable discovery refers to evidence the police obtained illegally but that the prosecution can still use to strengthen their case.

In these cases, the court determines the police could have found the information legally, given enough time, even if they initially came upon the information illegally. Therefore, this evidence becomes inevitable discovery because it is inevitable that the police would have found it anyway, even if they had done so legally, which is why courts may permit its use.

An example of a 4th Amendment violation occurred in Terry v. Ohio (1968). Here, a police officer noticed a group of men, one of which was John Terry, loitering in front of a jewelry store. This caused him to suspect they were casing the joint with the intent of robbing the store. He approached the men, told them he was a police officer, and frisked them. During the frisk, the officer found illegal, concealed weapons. He arrested the men, and after their trial, the court found them guilty. Terry received a sentence of three years in prison on the charge of illegal carrying a concealed weapon.

The defendant appealed the case all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court. Unfortunately for him, however, the Court ultimately sided with the lower court. The Court held that an officer may pat down a suspect to look for weapons if he has reasonable grounds for suspecting that individual of possessing a weapon. According to the Court, the officer conducted a reasonable search with probable cause.

Said the Court:

We conclude that the revolver seized from Terry was properly admitted in evidence against him. At the time he seized petitioner and searched him for weapons, Officer McFadden had reasonable grounds to believe that petitioner was armed and dangerous, and it was necessary for the protection of himself and others to take swift measures to discover the true facts and neutralize the threat of harm if it materialized. The policeman carefully restricted his search to what was appropriate to the discovery of the particular items which he sought.

Each case of this sort will, of course, have to be decided on its own facts. We merely hold today that, where a police officer observes unusual conduct which leads him reasonably to conclude in light of his experience that criminal activity may be afoot and that the persons with whom he is dealing may be armed and presently dangerous, where, in the course of investigating this behavior, he identifies himself as a policeman and makes reasonable inquiries, and where nothing in the initial stages of the encounter serves to dispel his reasonable fear for his own or others safety, he is entitled for the protection of himself and others in the area to conduct a carefully limited search of the outer clothing of such persons in an attempt to discover weapons which might be used to assault him. Such a search is a reasonable search under the Fourth Amendment, and any weapons seized may properly be introduced in evidence against the person from whom they were taken.

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4th Amendment - Definition, Examples, Cases, Processes

Still, it came as a little bit of a surprise last summer, when the Supreme Court ruled in Carpenter v. United States that a weeks worth of cellphone location data records were protected by the Fourth Amendment, despite being stored by a third-party cellphone provider, because an individual maintains a legitimate expectation of privacy in the record of his physical movements. (The court did leave open the possibility that it might be legal for the government to see location data for a shorter period than a week).

In many ways, the Carpenter ruling was a victory for privacy advocates and signaled the Supreme Courts willingness to rein in third-party doctrine a little bit in an era when almost all of our communications are handled by intermediary companies. But it was also a stark reminder of how much our Fourth Amendment protections depend on what we and, more important, what our judges legitimately expect in terms of privacy.

Some Supreme Court justices have been roundly (and often deservedly) mocked for their ignorance about basic everyday technologies, such as text messages and email. But one advantage to having an older, less tech-savvy judiciary is that their ideas about privacy were formed during an earlier era when it might well have been reasonable to expect that the police would not be able to obtain a weeks worth of detailed location information about you.

In United States v. Jones, decided in 2012, the court ruled that a warrant was required to collect someones location data using a GPS device attached to his car. The majority ruling held that the Fourth Amendment applied because it protected the car from being tampered with, but in a concurring opinion Justice Samuel Alito argued that it was actually the location data not the car that deserved Fourth Amendment protection. By way of explanation, he wrote, Societys expectation has been that law enforcement agents and others would not and indeed, in the main, simply could not secretly monitor and catalog movement of an individuals car for a very long period.

For many people, especially those of us who grew up with ubiquitous location-tracking devices, to say nothing of ubiquitous large-scale data breaches, that is no longer our expectation. Does that mean we lose our Fourth Amendment protections for the information we no longer expect to be secret?

In March, the Senate confirmed Allison Rushings nomination as a judge on the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. At 36, she became the youngest federal judge in the country. In many ways, a younger and presumably more tech-savvy judiciary is a good thing for deciding cases that revolve around modern technologies. But at the same time, the Supreme Court and other courts have been reluctant to erode the Fourth Amendments protections for data like location information because it seems reasonable to them that people would expect that material to be private. They themselves expect it to be private. As that expectation shifts with a younger judiciary, then so too may those protections.

Today, our ideas about what is and what should be private are changing fast. As we routinely hand over more and more information about ourselves, our communications, our locations and our activities to tech companies, predicating our legal privacy protections on what we expect, rather than what we think people deserve or have a right to, is deeply problematic.

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Opinion | Losing Our Fourth Amendment Data Protection - The ...

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by John Wesley Hall Criminal Defense Lawyer and Search and seizure law consultant Little Rock, Arkansas Contact: forhall @ aol.com / The Book http://www.johnwesleyhall.com

2003-19,online since Feb. 24, 2003

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Fourth Amendment cases, citations, and links

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"If it was easy, everybody would be doing it. It isn't, and they don't." Me

I am still learning.Domenico Giuntalodi (but misattributed to Michelangelo Buonarroti (common phrase throughout 1500's)).

"Love work; hate mastery over others; and avoid intimacy with the government." Shemaya, in the Thalmud

"A system of law that not only makes certain conduct criminal, but also lays down rules for the conduct of the authorities, often becomes complex in its application to individual cases, and will from time to time produce imperfect results, especially if one's attention is confined to the particular case at bar. Some criminals do go free because of the necessity of keeping government and its servants in their place. That is one of the costs of having and enforcing a Bill of Rights. This country is built on the assumption that the cost is worth paying, and that in the long run we are all both freer and safer if the Constitution is strictly enforced." Williams v. Nix, 700 F. 2d 1164, 1173 (8th Cir. 1983) (Richard Sheppard Arnold, J.), rev'd Nix v. Williams, 467 US. 431 (1984).

"The criminal goes free, if he must, but it is the law that sets him free. Nothing can destroy a government more quickly than its failure to observe its own laws, or worse, its disregard of the charter of its own existence."Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643, 659 (1961).

"Any costs the exclusionary rule are costs imposed directly by the Fourth Amendment."Yale Kamisar, 86 Mich.L.Rev. 1, 36 n. 151 (1987).

"There have been powerful hydraulic pressures throughout our history that bear heavily on the Court to water down constitutional guarantees and give the police the upper hand. That hydraulic pressure has probably never been greater than it is today." Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 39 (1968) (Douglas, J., dissenting).

"The great end, for which men entered into society, was to secure their property." Entick v. Carrington, 19 How.St.Tr. 1029, 1066, 95 Eng. Rep. 807 (C.P. 1765)

"It is a fair summary of history to say that the safeguards of liberty have frequently been forged in controversies involving not very nice people. And so, while we are concerned here with a shabby defrauder, we must deal with his case in the context of what are really the great themes expressed by the Fourth Amendment." United States v. Rabinowitz, 339 U.S. 56, 69 (1950) (Frankfurter, J., dissenting)

"The course of true law pertaining to searches and seizures, as enunciated here, has notto put it mildlyrun smooth." Chapman v. United States, 365 U.S. 610, 618 (1961) (Frankfurter, J., concurring).

"A search is a search, even if it happens to disclose nothing but the bottom of a turntable." Arizona v. Hicks, 480 U.S. 321, 325 (1987)

"For the Fourth Amendment protects people, not places. What a person knowingly exposes to the public, even in his own home or office, is not a subject of Fourth Amendment protection. ... But what he seeks to preserve as private, even in an area accessible to the public, may be constitutionally protected." Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 351 (1967)

Experience should teach us to be most on guard to protect liberty when the Governments purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding. United States v. Olmstead, 277 U.S. 438, 479 (1925) (Brandeis, J., dissenting)

Libertythe freedom from unwarranted intrusion by governmentis as easily lost through insistent nibbles by government officials who seek to do their jobs too well as by those whose purpose it is to oppress; the piranha can be as deadly as the shark. United States v. $124,570, 873 F.2d 1240, 1246 (9th Cir. 1989)

"You can't always get what you want / But if you try sometimes / You just might find / You get what you need." Mick Jagger & Keith Richards

"In Germany, they first came for the communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Catholic. Then they came for meand by that time there was nobody left to speak up." Martin Niemller (1945) [he served seven years in a concentration camp]

You know, most men would get discouraged by now. Fortunately for you, I am not most men!---Pep Le Pew

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fourthamendment.com - CA6: Parking enforcements chalking a ...

The Fourth Amendment includes the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.11 min read

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

To pass muster under the Fourth Amendment, detention must be 'reasonable.' See:

In the context of a criminal arrest, a detention of longer than 48 hours without a probable cause determination violates the Fourth Amendment as a matter of law in the absence of a demonstrated emergency or other extraordinary circumstance. See County of Riverside v. McLaughlin, 111 S.Ct. 1661, 670 ('91). However, the Supreme Court arrived at this rule by considering the time it takes to complete administrative steps typically incident to arrest.

Non-consensual extraction of blood implicates Fourth Amendment privacy rights. Some examples include:

Even in the law enforcement context, the State may interfere with an individual's Fourth Amendment interests with less than probable cause and without a warrant if the intrusion is only minimal and is justified by law enforcement purposes. For example,

The gathering of fingerprint evidence from 'free persons' constitutes a sufficiently significant interference with individual expectations of privacy that law enforcement officials are required to demonstrate that they have probable cause, or at least an articulable suspicion, to believe that the person committed a criminal offense and that the fingerprinting will establish or negate the person's connection to the offense. For example:

Nevertheless, everyday 'booking' procedures routinely require even the merely accused to provide fingerprint identification, regardless of whether investigation of the crime involves fingerprint evidence. See:

Thus, in the fingerprinting context, there exists a constitutionally significant distinction between the gathering of fingerprints from free persons to determine their guilt of an unsolved criminal offense and the gathering of fingerprints for identification purposes from persons within the lawful custody of the state.

The drawing of blood from free persons generally requires a warrant supported by probable cause to believe that a person has committed a criminal offense and that his blood will reveal evidence relevant to that offense. See: Schmerber, 384 U.S. at 768-71; U.S. v. Chapel, ___ F.3d ___, slip op. at 5753-54 (9th Cir.'95) (en banc), but the absence of such a warrant does not a fortiori establish a violation of the plaintiffs' Fourth Amendment rights.

The Supreme Court has noted repeatedly that the drawing of blood constitutes only a minimally intrusive search, as in the following cases:

"An essential purpose of a warrant requirement is to protect privacy interests by assuring citizens subject to a search or seizure that such intrusions are not the random or arbitrary acts of government agents." Skinner, 489 U.S. at 421-2 (holding that a warrant was not required in part because "in light of the standardized nature of the tests and the minimal discretion vested in those charged with administering the program, there are virtually no facts for a neutral magistrate to evaluate").

The Supreme Court recently reaffirmed and expanded the principle first enunciated in Skinner, stating that, in some contexts, "testing based on 'suspicion' of [wrongful activity] would not be better, but worse than suspicionless testing." Acton, 1995 WL 373274, at *8. In Acton, the Supreme Court upheld as constitutional a school district's practice of conducting random, suspicionless urine testing of school athletes for drug use. The Court rejected the proposition that the school district could "conduct such testing only if school officials had suspicion that a specific athlete was using drugs, holding that this alternative 'entails substantial difficulties -- if it is indeed practicable at all." Id. Accusatory drug testing would "transform[] the process into a badge of shame" and would increase the risk that school officials would impose testing arbitrarily upon disfavored, but not drug-using, students. Id.

Except in certain narrowly limited cases, the Court repeatedly has stated its "insist[ence] upon probable cause as a minimum requirement for a reasonable search permitted by the Constitution." Chambers v. Moreny, 399 U.S. 42, 51 ('70). Because "[t]he integrity of an individual's person is a cherished value in our society," searches that invade bodily integrity cannot be executed as mere fishing expeditions to acquire useful evidence: "The interests in human dignity and privacy which the Fourth Amendment protects forbid any such intrusions on the mere chance that desired evidence might be obtained." Schmerber, 384 U.S. at 772, 769-70.

Only when law enforcement faces an exigent circumstance, such as a need to preserve evanescent blood alcohol evidence, and has probable cause to link the sought-after information to a crime under investigation is it constitutional to conduct nonconsensual blood testing without a warrant. Id. at 770-71. Therefore, forced extraction of blood not only 'implicates the Fourth Amendment,' as the majority notes, but also falls squarely within the area of privacy interests for which the traditional probable cause requirement determines reasonableness in the law enforcement context. Forced blood extraction intrudes on the private personal sphere and infringes upon an individual's 'most personal and deep-rooted expectations of privacy.' Winston v. Lee, 470 U.S. 753, 60 ('85).

Schmerber v. California, 384 U.S. 757, 69 ('66). The Schmerber Court posed two questions:

In answering the first question, the Court recognized that it was 'writ[ing] on a clean slate' regarding the treatment of searches that involve intrusions into the human body. Id. at 767-8. It concluded that such searches require probable cause. Id. at 770-1.

Similarly, the Supreme Court in Winston v. Lee, 470 U.S. 753 ('85), recognized that Schmerber's threshold standard was a requirement of probable cause "where intrusions into the human body are concerned," which implicate "deep-rooted expectations of privacy." Id. at 761, 760. The Winston Court then acknowledged "other factors'' [b]eyond these standards that must be considered in determining whether a particular intrusion is reasonable. For instance, whether "the procedure threatens the safety or health of the individual" and "the extent of the intrusion upon the individual's dignitary interests." Id. at 761 (emphasis added).

In regard to the additional 'dignitary' factor (beyond the threshold inquiry of invasion of bodily integrity), the Winston Court noted Schmerber's recognition that blood extraction is not 'an unduly extensive imposition.' Id. at 762. The Court contrasted this lesser bodily invasion, which the Schmerber Court had upheld upon demonstration of probable cause, with the more drastic measure of dangerous surgery to recoup criminal evidence, which the Winston Court concluded would violate the individual's Fourth Amendment rights even when supported by probable cause.

Thus again, the context of the quotation demonstrates that the Court places blood extraction squarely within the probable cause requirement because it is an invasion of bodily integrity, while at the same time acknowledging that it is a less extensive imposition on dignitary interests than surgical removal of a bullet.

The unique situation in which the Supreme Court has approved suspicionless searches in the traditional law enforcement context includes the practice of stopping motorists at sobriety checkpoints. See Michigan Dep't of State Police v. Sitz, 496 U.S. 444 ('90). The Sitz Court relied on well-settled law that motorists have a lessened expectation of privacy regarding stops and visual searches of automobiles on the nation's roadways. Id. at 450 (explaining the importance of the context of 'police stops of motorists on public highways'). At these sobriety checkpoints, which motorists may choose to avoid, only the initial brief stop and preliminary questioning may take place without individualized suspicion: "more extensive field sobriety testing" requires justification. Id. at 450-2.

Like the highway sobriety checkpoints, the 'special needs beyond normal law enforcement' rationale supports searches on lesser grounds than probable cause only in a very few, carefully tailored regulatory contexts that do not involve apprehension of criminal perpetrators. See, for example, National Treasury Employees Union v. Von Raab, 489 U.S. 656, 65-66 ('89) (applying the special needs exception to suspicionless quasi-consensual drug testing of Customs Service employees seeking transfer to positions having a direct involvement in drug interdiction).

The special needs exception covers testing which "is not designed to serve the ordinary needs of law enforcement [because] . . . results may not be used in criminal prosecution." Von Raab, 489 U.S. at 666 (emphases added). Even so, a search in the special needs context almost always requires individualized suspicion. See the following cases:

Nonetheless, routine searches that intrude into prisoners' bodies without probable cause may be upheld only when the search is undertaken pursuant to a valid prison regulation that is reasonably related to a legitimate penological objective. For instance:

Individuals have a categorically different and lesser expectation of privacy in their fingerprints, visual images, or voice prints.

The Fourth Amendment provides no protection for what 'a person knowingly exposes to the public'. Like a man's facial characteristics, or handwriting, his voice is repeatedly produced for others to hear. No person can have a reasonable expectation that others will not know the sound of his voice, any more than he can reasonably expect that his face will be a mystery to the world.

Blanket searches are unreasonable, however "even-handed" they may be, in the traditional criminal law enforcement context. See, e.g., Ybarra v. Illinois, 444 U.S. 85, 91-2, 92 n.4 ('79) (invalidating a blanket pat-down search of all patrons in a tavern, even though there was probable cause to search the bartender and the premises). The ill that the Fourth Amendment prevents is not merely the arbitrariness of police discretion to single out individuals for attention, but also the unwarranted domination and control of the citizenry through fear of baseless but "even-handed" general police searches.

In Zurcher, the Supreme Court held that a search of the offices of a university newspaper, which was not involved in any criminal activity, for photographs of demonstrators who had assaulted police officers did not offend the Fourth Amendment's ban against unreasonable searches and seizures. The court concluded: "[T]he Amendment has not been a barrier to warrants to search property on which there is probable cause to believe that fruits, instrumentalities, or evidence of crime is located, whether or not the owner or possessor of the premises to be searched is himself reasonably suspected of complicity in the crime being investigated." Zurcher v. Stanford Daily ('78) 436 U.S. 547, 549-50.

Fourth Amendment protects the "right of the people to be secure in their persons . . . against unreasonable searches and seizures." The essence of that protection is a prohibition against some modes of law enforcement because the cost of police intrusion into personal liberty is too high, even though the intrusion undoubtedly would result in an enormous boon to the public if the efficient apprehension of criminals were the sole criterion to be considered. "The easiest course for [law enforcement] officials is not always one that our Constitution allows them to take." Wolfish, 441 U.S. at 595 (Stevens, dissenting).

A permanent resident alien is entitled to constitutional protection. For example:

Martinez v. Nygaard, 831 F.2d 822, 824, 826-28 (9th Cir.'87) (analyzing whether seizures of three resident aliens complied with Fourth Amendment).

Read more here:
Fourth Amendment | UpCounsel 2019

In a new case, Taylor v. City of Saginaw, the Sixth Circuit has ruled that the common practice of parking enforcement officers "chalking" a tire to see if the car has been moved violates the Fourth Amendment. I'm not sure the decision is correct. But it's plausible on current law, and it raises some really interesting conceptual issues. [SEE UPDATE BELOW ON THE AMENDED OPINION]

Here's an overview of the new case and some thoughts on whether it's right.

First, the facts. Alison Taylor gets a lot of parking tickets, and she decided to make a federal case out of it. Specifically, she sued the city of Saginaw in federal court. She alleged that her constitutional rights were violated by practice of "chalking" her tire to figure out if she had overstayed the time she was permitted to park her car.

I don't know of any other cases in which "chalking" was alleged to violate the Fourth Amendment. But the Sixth Circuit ruled that it did, in a decision authored by Judge Donald joined by Judge Kethledge and Judge Keith. And the court's reasoning seems broadly applicable to all of our cars, not just Alison Taylor's.

Here's the court's thinking. First, the court reasons that the chalking is a search of the car because it is a trespass on to the car to obtain information under United States v. Jones. It's a trespass under Jones, the court says, because it satisfies the common law trespass test:

In accordance with Jones, the threshold question is whether chalking constitutes common-law trespass upon a constitutionally protected area. Though Jones does not provide clear boundaries for the meaning of common-law trespass, the Restatement offers some assistance. As defined by the Restatement, common-law trespass is "an act which brings [about] intended physical contact with a chattel in the possession of another." Restatement (Second) of Torts 217 cmt. e (1965). Moreover, "[a]n actor may . . . commit a trespass by so acting upon a chattel as intentionally to cause it to come in contact with some other object." Id. Adopting this definition, there has been a trespass in this case because the City made intentional physical contact with Taylor's vehicle. As the district court properly found, this physical intrusion, regardless of how slight, constitutes common-law trespass. This is so, even though "no damage [is done] at all." Jones, 565 U.S. at 405 (quoting Entick v. Carrington, 95 Eng. Rep. 807, 817 (C.P. 1765)).

Next, it is an act conducted to obtain information, as Jones requires:

[O]nce we determine the government has trespassed upon a constitutionally protected area, we must then determine whether the trespass was "conjoined with . . . an attempt to find something or to obtain information." Id. at 408 n.5. Here, it was. Neither party disputes that the City uses the chalk marks for the purpose of identifying vehicles that have been parked in the same location for a certain period of time. That information is then used by the City to issue citations. As the district court aptly noted, "[d]espite the low-tech nature of the investigative technique . . . , the chalk marks clearly provided information to Hoskins." This practice amounts to an attempt to obtain information under Jones.

Having concluded that the chalking was a search, the court then concludes that it was unreasonable and therefore unconstitutional. The basic idea here is that no exceptions to the warrant requirement apply, so by default the warrantless search is unlawful. First, the automobile exception does not apply:

The automobile exception permits officers to search a vehicle without a warrant if they have "probable cause to believe that the vehicle contains evidence of a crime." United States v. Smith, 510 F.3d 641, 647 (6th Cir. 2007) (citation omitted). No such probable cause existed here. Thus, the automobile exception is inapplicable.

Next, the search was not reasonable under the community caretaker exception:

The City fails to carry its burden of establishing that the community caretaker exception applies in this instance. First, on these facts, the City fails to demonstrate how this search bears a relation to public safety. The City does not show that the location or length of time that Taylor's vehicle was parked created the type of "hazard" or traffic impediment amounting to a public safety concern. Nor does the City demonstrate that delaying a search would result in "injury orongoing harm to the community." Washington, 573 F.3d at 289. To the contrary, at the time of the search, Taylor's vehicle was lawfully parked in a proper parking location, imposing no safety risk whatsoever. Because the purpose of chalking is to raise revenue, and not to mitigate public hazard, the City was not acting in its "role as [a] community caretake[.]" Id. at 287.

And finally, the search was not justifiable based on a general interest in having an orderly parking system:

While the City is entitled to maintain efficient, orderly parking, the manner in which it chooses to do so is not without constitutional limitation. As the Supreme Court explains, "the [Fourth] Amendment does not place an unduly oppressive weight on [the government] but merely . . . an orderly procedure. . . ." Jeffers, 342 U.S. at 51 (citation omitted).

The City does not demonstrate, in law or logic, that the need to deter drivers from exceeding the time permitted for parkingbefore they have even done sois sufficient to justify a warrantless search under the community caretaker rationale. This is not to say that this exception can never apply to the warrantless search of a lawfully parked vehicle. Nor does our holding suggest that no other exceptions to the warrant requirement might apply in this case. However, on these facts and on the arguments the City proffers, the City fails to meet its burden in establishing an exception to the warrant requirement.

Here are a few thoughts on the case:

(1) From a practical perspective, this is a really important decision. It concludes that a routine practice that wasn't thought to be illegal (if it was thought of at all) is actually unconstitutional. I'm not sure if the decision is correct. And as I'll explain below, there are several plausible but debatable moves in the opinion. But this decision is now binding in the Sixth Circuit and may also be followed elsewhere: Traffic enforcement officers around the country should be paying attention to this.

(2) Is the decision right? As I said above, I'm not sure. United States v. Jones introduced the idea of the trespass or physical intrusion test for searches in 2012. As I've written before, Jones could mean a lot of different things. It's just not yet clear what the standard is or how it should apply. Given that, I think the result in Tayloris plausible but that it's also subject to several plausible objections.

(3) Start with the question of trespass. First, the court takes from Jones the idea that the test is "common law trespass." Maybe that's the test. But maybe it's not. The Court in Florida v. Jardines notably did not describe the Jones test as a trespass test. Instead, Jardines described the test as "physical intrusion." That's potentially pretty different. And assuming the test is common law trespass, figuring out what kind of trespass test that meant is actually pretty tricky. Maybe it's the Restatement test, but maybe it's something different.

(4) I'm also not sure of the court's conclusion that the chalking was "to obtain information," needed to satisfy the search test from Jones. That's certainly a possible result. But it also strikes me as a somewhat awkward fit.

Here's the context. In Jones, the officer installed the GPS device on a suspect's car and then obtained GPS info from it as the car was tracked for 28 days. The majority ruled this a search in part on the ground that installing the GPS was done to obtain informationspecifically, the stream of data from the GPS that would provide the location of the car to which it was attached. Here's the most relevant discussion of the intent test from Footnote 5 of Jones:

Trespass alone does not qualify, but there must be conjoined with that what was present here: an attempt to find something or to obtain information.

Related to this, and similarly irrelevant, is the concurrence's point that, if analyzed separately, neither the installation of the device nor its use would constitute a Fourth Amendment search. Of course not. A trespass on "houses" or "effects," or aKatzinvasion of privacy, is not alone a search unless it is done to obtain information; and the obtaining of information is not alone a search unless it is achieved by such a trespass or invasion of privacy.

The Sixth Circuit in Taylor sees that element satisfied by the chalking. And it is no doubt true that the officer chalked the car with the ultimate goal of finding out a factwhether the car had moved. That may be right under Jones.

On the other hand, it seems like a somewhat unusual application of the intent test. I would think the Fourth Amendment idea of a "search" of a person's "effects" ordinarily implies intent to obtain information from the effect searched. Normally, searching a box means getting information from inside the box. Searching a home means getting information from inside the home.

In Taylor, however, the officer's plan is to place his chalk on the car and then come back later and see if the chalk movedthus giving the officer a clue about whether the car moved. That's information about the car, but it seems removed from a search of the car itself. After all, the car is just out in public. It is sitting on a public street for anyone to see. And the officer is just looking at the chalk the officer placed. Is it really a search of the car at Time A to see at Time B if the chalk moved between Time A and Time B?

Maybe yes. Maybe the problem is that Jones itself was an awkward fit. The obtaining of information in Jones was also just ultimately about the car and where it had been in public, as well. And the Supreme Court apparently found that sufficient. But it's at least a question worth raising: Are there limits on what kind of information the government needs to want to obtain, and from what, and when, to satisfy the Jones test?

(5) Assuming the chalking is a search, the next question is whether it is constitutionally reasonable. I agree with the Court's analysis of the automobile exception and the community care-taking exception. But I suspect some courts might disagree with the Sixth Circuit's reasonableness analysis on the ground that chalking is a de minimis search as part of a regulatory scheme. It's just putting a temporary mark on a tire, it causes no damage, and it doesn't reveal anything. Some courts have articulated doctrines that allow low-level searches as reasonable based on a balancing of interests without particularized suspicion. I can imagine that as a possible path for other courts. We'll see.

(6) I have to wonder how much this issue matters in a world of smart phones. Everyone is now carrying around a camera. Instead of chalking the tire, the parking folks can just take a picture of the car. They can figure out if the car moved by comparing the pictures at Time A and Time B to see if the car is in the same place. It may be more complicated or expensive than chalking, but it avoids the Fourth Amendment concern by just observing what is in public without any physical attachment to property.

(7) Finally, it's not at all clear what if any remedies may be applicable. Chalking is common and hasn't been thought to be illegal. Given that, qualified immunity should attach and civil suits against the officers won't work. And it's not clear that there is any exclusionary rule available in an enforcement action to pay the parking ticket, as that is a civil proceeding and the exclusionary rule may not apply under United States v. Janis.

[UPDATE #1: Some readers suggest in that I should offer a more complete survey of remedies that are available in (7) above. In that case, I should note that civil suits should be available against municipalities that have a chalking policy, and injunctive relief may be available. For an overview of Fourth Amendment remedies, see this paper at pages 239-45.]

[UPDATE #2: Thinking about the case some more, let me add a new point (8). There's a way to read the Sixth Circuit's decision a lot more narrowly than I have above, and many others have elsewhere. Here's how. The ruling in Taylor was based on a motion to dismiss under Fed. R. Civ. Pro. 12(b)(6). This means that whenTaylor sued, the defendants (the city and officer) responded that the case should be tossed out at the outset because the complaint itself didn't establish a plausible case. The court in Taylor is just ruling on that, and it isn't actually offering a full ruling yet on the constitutionality of the search. Ordinarily, the government has the burden of showing that a warrantless search was reasonable. But the government hasn't had the opportunity to make that showing yet, as we're just going on the complaint.

This means, if I'm understanding the civil procedure aspects of this case correctlyI'm a crim pro prof, not a civ pro profthe rulings that the court offers on reasonableness are particularly tentative. Now that the case goes back down to the district court on remand, the civil defendants can make different arguments about why the searches were reasonable and can offer new evidence to support their reasonableness arguments (both old and new, if applicable). The Sixth Circuit's opinion notes this very briefly near the end:

Nor does our holding suggest that no other exceptions to the warrant requirement might apply in this case. However, on these facts and on the arguments the City proffers, the City fails to meet its burden in establishing an exception to the warrant requirement.

I had missed this in part because the court offers a pretty thorough discussion of several fact-specific exceptions to the warrant requirement. It's a little bit unusual to see that given the procedural posture. But I think the procedural posture of the case may end up being important, as it means that the court could issue a new ruling reaching a different result when the case is more fully litigated.]

UPDATE #3: The Sixth Circuit has issued an amended opinion clarifying the narrow scope of its holding. Here's the new conclusion:

Taking the allegations in Taylor's complaint as true, we hold that chalking is a search under the Fourth Amendment, specifically under the Supreme Court's decision in Jones. This does not mean, however, that chalking violates the Fourth Amendment. Rather, we hold, based on the pleading stage of this litigation, that two exceptions to the warrant requirementthe "community caretaking" exception and the motor-vehicle exceptiondo not apply here. Our holding extends no further than this. When the record in this case moves beyond the pleadings stage, the City is, of course, free to argue anew that one or both of those exceptions do apply, or that some other exception to the warrant requirement might apply.

More:
Chalking Tires and the Fourth Amendment Reason.com