The Supreme Court's Next Fourth Amendment Showdown

[tn1911]

https://reason.com/2020/01/30/the-su...ment-showdown/

Assume you are a 17-year-old licensed driver and your father's driver's license has been suspended. He hands you the keys to his car and asks you to run an errand. While completing that errand you are stopped by the police. You have not broken a single law. You were stopped only because the officer guessed that your father might be driving. Was the traffic stop lawful?

According to Kansas, it does not matter if innocent drivers happen to get stopped based on the false assumption that someone else is behind the wheel. "While it is certainly possible that the registered owner of a vehicle is not the driver, 'it is reasonable for an officer to suspect that the owner is driving the vehicle, absent other circumstances that demonstrate the owner is not driving,'" the state maintains. "That is the very point of investigative stops—to confirm or dispel an officer's suspicion."

The Supreme Court has an unfortunate record of sometimes whittling away the Fourth Amendment in traffic stop cases. A victory for the state here would lower the constitutional safeguard even further.

[MegademiC]

I think I could go either way on this.
Im leaning towards its ok, and “reasonable suspicion”, as long as the stop ends at ID of the driver.

On the flip side- anyone could be driving, so maybe its not reasonable. Maybe im not seeing the big picture of other ramifications.

[FromMyColdDeadHand]

I feel like I can almost see where this could go wrong, but it is hard to put down.

If someone gets a restraining order for DV, do you get red-flagged just in case, if your adult son living at home has a gun, does he lose it?

IF some violation of the law takes away your right to something, does that mean others rights around you are less protected because of your status.

Seem like living with a parole would be an issue.

[Alpha-17]

Considering how badly abused vehicular traffic stops are, and how frequently I've seen LE organizations brag about how they grabbed someone's guns, money, or drugs through a traffic stop where no other crime was being committed, I would love to see yet another method of triggering it slapped down. That said, considering that in the case in question, they got a guy driving illegally, I doubt SCOTUS will do so. Too cut and dry for them.

[Whiskey_Bravo]

I think I could go either way on this.
Im leaning towards its ok, and “reasonable suspicion”, as long as the stop ends at ID of the driver.

/sniff sniff..... Smells like marijuana in the car. Please step out.

[BoringGuy45]

I think I could go either way on this.
Im leaning towards its ok, and “reasonable suspicion”, as long as the stop ends at ID of the driver.

On the flip side- anyone could be driving, so maybe its not reasonable. Maybe im not seeing the big picture of other ramifications.

I'm also leaning towards okay. It's reasonable to assume that the person to whom the vehicle is registered is most likely going to be the driver. So like you said, as long it's confirmed that the driver is properly licensed, that should be the end of the stop. However, where I can see it get dicey is when the cops use a stop such as this to continue to investigate. There would likely have to be another case to determine whether or not any further investigation that uncovered anything would be permissible or fruit from the poisonous tree.

[Business_Casual]

/sniff sniff..... Smells like marijuana in the car. Please step out.

Fruit of a poison tree, ?I agree.

[OH58D]

I am guessing the stop is legal because you have to be State licensed to operate a vehicle on a Public Road. However, I find it interesting the number of stops (Live PD Viewer) involving a K-9 where the dog "hits" on a vehicle, justifying a search. Only LE gets to determine if the dog has a valid "hit".

Along the same line of 4th Amendment protection, and having served on the Sheriff's Posse, I have seen situations where US Marshalls and County Deputies surround a house of the parents of a fugitive who committed a crime in another State. The Marshalls and Deputies don't have a search warrant, only an arrest warrant. House is surrounded by lots of people with drawn weapons, and the family hesitates to open the door even after a lot of banging on the doors and yelling. Finally when they come to the door, LE tries to force a search of the house, including telling the occupants they all need to step outside. This is where you have resistance because without a search warrant, LE is on thin ice telling everyone they need to come outside.

Lots of room for potential abuse of the 4th Amendment in nearly anything you can be engaged in - driving, walking down the street or just occupying your own home, and most people don't know what their rights are. Last week's episode of Live PD had a Police stop in Pomona, CA because a guy was carrying bolt cutters walking down the street. I guess Home Depot or Ace Hardware need to put a sign above their Bolt Cutters which reads: "Burglary Tool in the State of California".

[gunnerblue]

If the officer has no articulable facts leading him or her to reasonably believe that the driver is NOT the registered owner of the vehicle, then lawful. The stop should end with the identification, though, barring any further issues.

In general, I don’t like hypothetical questions in cases like this. In this case, the driver was in fact the one with a revoked license.

[FromMyColdDeadHand]

If the officer has no articulable facts leading him or her to reasonably believe that the driver is NOT the registered owner of the vehicle, then lawful. The stop should end with the identification, though, barring any further issues.

In general, I don’t like hypothetical questions in cases like this. In this case, the driver was in fact the one with a revoked license.

Owner, not driver. (ETA: I see you are referring to the actual case, not the hypothetical, though the state is saying that the hypothetical is in play too.)

The problem is that with modern tools, his kid could be pulled over everytime he drove, everytime he passed he passed into a new jurisdiction. So what is the acceptable level of intrusion?