U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor has emerged as a
consistent and outspoken voice in favor of broad Fourth Amendment rights.
Here's a brief look at some of Sotomayor's most notable actions in recent
Fourth Amendment cases, courtesy of Reason magazine.
Missouri v. McNeely
At issue in this 2013 dispute is whether the Fourth
Amendment stands in the way of the police obtaining a warrantless and
nonconsensual blood test from a suspected drunk driver. Writing for the
majority, Sotomayor held that
the amendment is indeed such a bulwark. "In those drunk-driving
investigations where police officers can reasonably obtain a warrant before a
blood sample can be drawn without significantly undermining the efficacy of the
search," Sotomayor wrote, "the Fourth Amendment mandates that they do
so."
Navarette v. California
In this 2014 case a majority of the Supreme Court said that
no Fourth Amendment violation took place when the police conducted a traffic
stop and resulting drug bust based solely on information obtained from an anonymous
telephone tip. "The Court's opinion serves up a freedom-destroying
cocktail," Justice Antonin Scalia seethed in dissent. "All the
malevolent 911 caller need do is assert a traffic violation, and the targeted
car will be stopped, forcibly if necessary, by the police." That troubling
scenario, Scalia wrote, "is not my concept, and I am sure it would not be
the Framers', of a people secure from unreasonable searches and seizures."
Sotomayor signed on to Scalia's dissent.
Rodriguez v. United States
At issue in this case was whether a police officer
"unnecessarily prolonged" an otherwise legal traffic stop when he
called for backup in order to walk a drug-sniffing dog around the stopped
vehicle. During the January 2015 oral
arguments, Justice Department lawyer Ginger Adams insisted that the police
are entitled to broad leeway when it comes to determining the amount of time
that's "reasonably required" in that sort of situation. Justice
Sotomayor took a decidedly different view. "We can't keep bending the
Fourth Amendment to the resources of law enforcement," an exasperated
Sotomayor lectured Adams. "What you're proposing," she told the
government lawyer, is an approach that's "purely to help the police get
more criminals, yes. But then the Fourth Amendment becomes a useless piece of
paper." Three months later Sotomayor joined the majority in voiding the
officer's unconstitutional actions.
Mullenix v. Luna
This case centered on a whether or not a police officer was
entitled to qualified immunity after using deadly force to end a high-speed car
chase. In a 2015 per curiam opinion,
the Supreme Court held that the officer was entitled to qualified immunity. In
a lone dissent, Sotomayor faulted her colleagues for "sanctioning a 'shoot
first, think later' approach to policing [that] renders the protections of the
Fourth Amendment hollow."
Utah v. Strieff
In this 2016 ruling the
Supreme Court held that the Constitution does not prohibit law enforcement
officials from using evidence that had been obtained as a result of an illegal
police stop because it turned out that the man who was illegally stopped
happened to be the subject of an outstanding traffic warrant. "This case allows
the police to stop you on the street, demand your identification, and check it
for outstanding traffic warrants--even if you are doing nothing wrong,"
Sotomayor fumed in dissent. "If the officer discovers a warrant for a fine
you forgot to pay, courts will now excuse his illegal stop and will admit into
evidence anything he happens to find by searching you after arresting you on
the warrant." In her view, "the Fourth Amendment should prohibit, not
permit, such misconduct" by the police.
Birchfield v. North Dakota
The final case in our list was decided just last week. At
issue here was whether warrantless chemical tests for suspected drunk drivers
violate the Fourth Amendment. In a divided opinion, the Court held that
warrantless blood tests do violate the Constitution but warrantless breath
tests do not. Writing separately, Justice Sotomayor insisted that both types of
warrantless DUI tests should have been struck down as unconstitutional.
"Because no governmental interest categorically makes it impractical for
an officer to obtain a warrant before measuring a driver's alcohol level,"
Sotomayor wrote, "the Fourth Amendment prohibits such searches without a
warrant, unless exigent circumstances exist in a particular case."
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