Liberty is never more precious than now. immediately.
The Supreme Court just overturned the opinions of two lower courts and said a law enforcement officer who had a hunch did not violate a man’s 4th Amendment rights when he stopped his car without ‘reasonable suspicion’ of lawbreaking. Conservative Associate Justice Clarence Thomas wrote the opinion for the 8-1 majority, with only Liberal Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor in dissent. Are you willing to give a cop discretion to stop you if he “lacks information negating an inference”?
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19 replies on “Preemptive Policing: Supreme Court Backs Cop Who Stops Car on a Hunch”
Not enough information on this one but I’m with the majority on this one. No, Bill it is not a “hunch” that everyone driving the cars are the owners. It is a “reasonable inference”. And based on that inference, the officer has the right to make to stop and ascertain if the inference is the fact. If the driver is not the owner (the person who had their license revoked), the officer then allows the person to go on their way without further interference. If I have any question it is simply this, why did anyone even mention the word “hunch”? And Scot, driver licenses are not revoked for mere violations. They are revoked because drivers have been proven by a pattern of behavior (most often more than one occurrence) to present a clear and imminent danger to others on the road. Keeping them off the road is important.
Can police legally stop cars on a hunch? Good question. Just not the actual question addressed by the court.
The actual ruling:
“Held: When the officer lacks information negating an inference that the owner is driving the vehicle, an investigative traffic stop made after running a vehicle’s license plate and learning that the registered owner’s driver’s license has been revoked is reasonable under the Fourth Amendment.”
Can the police assume that the driver of a vehicle is the same person on the vehicle’s registration? Unless someone reports a missing/stolen car, that’s the assumption we work with in hit-and-run and amber-alert cases.
The Supreme Court does not meet to debate esoteric hypotheticals, but actual facts of an actual specific case with evidence presented to support a decision or not. The written decisions typically describe the relationship of the specific case to the larger principles of law but are not meant to define law for any other case except the one before the Court. That many recent Supreme Court cases have been extrapolated to inform laws way beyond the case in question (Obergefell, for example) merely furthers this misunderstanding of the Court’s purpose and serves to encourage the idea of legislating from the Bench.
AMEN
Police officer here, not sure I quite agree with this discussion. The law says that vehicles need to be registered in order to be operated on the roadway. People have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their cars and on their person for sure, but they do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy to information on whether or not their car is properly registered and for agents of government to check. License plates are in plain view of the officer. No stop, search, or seizure of anything that is constitutionally protected occurs when merely running a license plate. There is literally no other method for checking compliance with registration requirements. If the vehicle is not properly registered the offense has already occurred, probable cause exist, thus absolutely justifying a stop.
What is interesting in this case is and what the actual issue the court is determining is, that since we also get the registered owners information and operators license status, whether or not that license being suspended or expired justifies the stop. While probable cause doesn’t exist because we cannot know who is driving, I would say that it is reasonable to believe that the registered owner is the one operating the vehicle and an investigatory stop is justified. I don’t call that a hunch. I haven’t read the decisions of the justices but I would expect that the basis for their decisions is that they decided that reasonable suspicion existed. I may be wrong, maybe I’ll get some time to read it later. Not saying I am in love with that, but legally speaking it is sound.
On the point of whether or not police should be allowed to run a license plate I will add that police vehicles are increasingly being mounted with automatic license plate readers that scan all plates they come by for registration and stolen status. They can also hit on cars when the registered owner is wanted or in this case whether he has a valid license. The only difference between the machine doing it and an officer is the physical ability of the officer to run every plate he comes by. I would say this is the future of traffic enforcement, but there is something you may be interested in hearing about in the works. Digital License plates are not far from being implemented. They may or may not be used to be remotely/automatically updated by state systems to change the information that is displayed on the license plate. For instance if the car is stolen maybe it will flash STOLEN in bright red, or if its unregistered, expired, doesn’t have insurance.
My solution is to repeal the law requiring drivers licenses. That’ll keep government out of our knickers!:)
Sorry guys.. I believe you got it wrong this time.. I agree with Colonel K and Daniel B.. Very long ago, the courts decided that a drivers license was a privilege and not a right. They also decided that a motor vehicle that was to drive on our highways and byways must be licensed. A privilege to drive on them, not a right. There are those who will say they have a constitutional right to travel and by george they do, but not on the highways and byways in an unlicensed vehicle. (This is why the gun/car issue is bologna. Gun 2nd amendment-car and drive not so much) Anyway, to me the issue is not so much a 14th AM issue as a probable cause issue. Since the courts have said time and again that the “highly Mobile” auto does not have the same 14th as a residence, then lesser cause is required. (Sorry Steve, your tax argument holds about as much water as a glass with no bottom..Still love ya though) The vehicle is in public view and again, the courts have agreed many times that it is open to scrutiny by officers and that they may also access the information related to that vehicle. If the SCOTUS agrees that the information gleaned from that inquiry gives an officer probable cause for a stop, then the stop,inquiry and arrest is good. If the PC for the stop is bad, then the whole thing is bad (poisonous tree). Now, if the owner (known to be unlicensed)was not the driver, then the officer should explain the reason for the stop, apologize and let them be on their way. (ABSOLUTELY NOT try to press for some other reason for search, cite, etc) … Personally, I believe that the odds of the owner being the driver are pretty high and thus agree with the SCOTUS. But that is my opinion. I am a strong constitutionalist but in this case I don’t see it as a constitutional issue. There are issues that protect drivers, but that is for another ramble… Love y’all and keep up the good work! Would like to go into more detail, but don’t want to bloviate and bore people …
You bloviated.
What shocks me is that for the very first time I completely disagree with you guys. Driving on a public road is a privilege, not a right. The police are well within their authority to randomly run plates in search of potential violators or stolen cars. The people in the vehicle are not inconvenienced by this action. If the report turns up nothing, the officer will continue on his way. If the report turns up something, it is the duty of the officer to act. If he did not act, and the driver subsequently ran over a child, wouldn’t the police be declared culpable in the subsequent lawsuit the family would file against the department? And what if the report said the owner had his license revoked for DWI or DUI; does that mean the cop shouldn’t stop the guy and see if he is the owner? What if there is an active warrant for the owner of the car? Does the officer not assume the guy driving it is the wanted felon? If the answers are no, then should officers be prevented from requesting ID when you want to enter a government building, board an airplane, or attend a political event?
What would be unreasonable is a cop stopping someone for no reason, such as after a license plate report came back clean. In such situations they typically will use the old broken taillight or tinted window excuse if they really want to question you.
Colonel K, I see what you are saying. I believe that peace officers in the United States are in an awkward position these days.
However, police officers are under no legal obligation to protect an individual. In Castle Rock VS Gonzales the mother of threee children begged the police to arrest her former husband. He murdered their three children then shot up a police station. Even a government institution that is built for the purpose of protecting a helpless child (as you mentioned)gets a pass. In Deshaney VS Winnebago County Social services the social services simply failed to act in the interest of Joshua DeShaney.
So, yes, they may file but the precedent is against the family filing. In short, the law already protects law enforcement/government interests.
Then, the random sampling of private information is not safe on the highest levels of government (FBI,NSA,IRS) and they have constant watchdog activity pushing them back. A small town officer using his or her authorities (not rights) to examine private information without strong oversight and repercussions for misuse of that information is dangerous. I don’t even mean to say that willful misuse is the only problem here. What regulations on retaining acquired information could truly protect citizens from information theft?
Bobby Jindal had some interesting ideas about this in a fairly old article:
https://www.rt.com/usa/270055-police-license-plate-scanning-criminals/
I am prior law enforcement and corrections. I sympathize with officers that truly want to do their jobs in honest and effective ways, Colonel K. I just espouse that core principle that the spirit of the law that they enforce must have been born from the law of the land…Which is the Constitution of the United States of America. The spirit of that document was forged in the fires of rebellion. Its sole message is that order is important but freedom is sacred and inviolable.
I hope that I was not off point here, Colonel K. Thank you for having the backs of officers. So often they do not have that.
When a court decision is that one-sided against the way I think it should go, it probably means I don’t actually understand the case. The Supreme Court tends to look at incredibly narrow questions about a case.
The narrow issue in this case was:
Whether, for purposes of an investigative stop under the Fourth Amendment, it is reasonable for an officer to suspect that the registered owner of a vehicle is the one driving the vehicle absent any information to the contrary.
Bill, you flipped from arguing against the decision to arguing for the decision. Of course it was obvious that the person driving the car is probably the owner of the car. That’s the only question before the court: was it reasonable to infer that exact thing. And yes, that’s obvious. That’s all the court is saying.
And there are probably additional facts to support the inference. If he got the basic information from running the plate, he knew that the person was a male of a specific age. So he knew it wasn’t his son, father, or wife. Might be his brother or a friend, but it’s completely rational to conclude that he was in fact the owner.
Now, to Scott’s argument, which is the more troubling, and which the court did not address: whether it was okay for the cop to run the plates. That is an argument worth having, but it is not what the court was deciding.
But if that in fact had been the issue before the court, the outcome would probably have been the same. That is long-settled caselaw. Cops have wide latitude to run plates. This is because the courts decided long ago that the plate is not protected by the Fourth Amendment. It is openly displayed in public. And thus, the information linked to the plate is not protected.
I actually think that the real constitutional argument worth having isn’t even about running the plate. It’s about whether the plate exists in the first place. Why does the state’s interest in registering vehicles outweigh an individual’s right to privacy? In this particular case, if the plate did not exist, if no cars had plates and no database existed, the cop would never have pulled him over.
As far as I can tell, the state only issues plates for two reasons: 1) to collect taxes, and 2) to provide law enforcement with a way to track vehicles. Why does that outweigh a person’s Fourth Amendment rights? I think that in this age of data collection privacy violations, we need to re-evaluate this at the most basic level. All of the higher-level data collection privacy laws are justified by analogies to things like license plates. Why do we allow state governments to force us to buy a license to own a car? In the UK you have to pay a license fee to own a TV. We think that’s crazy. Why do we think it’s okay for cars?
I’m not really an anarcho-capitalist-libertarian but I do think that every now and then we need to revisit these ideas.
You raise a fair question. On the “run the plates” issue, Steve’s analogy is interesting — fishing for tax delinquents by running the address data just to see if the homeowner is in violation. It might be considered harassment if it weren’t so apparently random. I don’t like the idea of random law enforcement. Frankly, I had never imagined a world with no license plates. Ronald Reagan talked about how before the state licensed drivers, you were allowed on the road when you’re parent’s thought it safe.
I don’t know if a world with no license plates is the right answer. I think y’all were trying to get to the underlying issue, which was not before the Court.
True. And yet we’ve rarely been constrained by the bounds of the actual topic. 😉
Which is what we actually love most about you guys!
Gotta say, I like Scott’s argument that the cop didn’t have probable cause to run the plate in the first place best.
I think this is the more important point. I would like to know why this case actually made it to the court. There is probably some underlying issue that I don’t understand. Might actually have to do more research. Yet another reason not to start my novel.