City of L. A. v. Patel
City of L. A. v. Patel
Opinion
Respondents brought a Fourth Amendment challenge to a provision of the Los Angeles Municipal Code that compels "[e]very operator of a hotel to keep a record" containing specified information concerning guests and to make this record "available to any officer of the Los Angeles Police Department for inspection" on demand. Los Angeles Municipal Code §§ 41.49(2), (3)(a), (4) (2015). The questions presented are whether facial challenges to statutes can be brought under the Fourth Amendment and, if so, whether this provision of the Los Angeles Municipal Code is facially invalid. We hold facial challenges can be brought under the Fourth Amendment. We further hold that the provision of the Los Angeles Municipal Code that requires hotel operators to make their registries available to the police on demand is facially unconstitutional because it penalizes them for declining to turn over their records without affording them any opportunity for precompliance review.
I
A
Los Angeles Municipal Code (LAMC) § 41.49 requires hotel operators to record *2448 information about their guests, including: the guest's name and address; the number of people in each guest's party; the make, model, and license plate number of any guest's vehicle parked on hotel property; the guest's date and time of arrival and scheduled departure date; the room number assigned to the guest; the rate charged and amount collected for the room; and the method of payment. § 41.49(2). Guests without reservations, those who pay for their rooms with cash, and any guests who rent a room for less than 12 hours must present photographic identification at the time of check-in, and hotel operators are required to record the number and expiration date of that document. § 41.49(4). For those guests who check in using an electronic kiosk, the hotel's records must also contain the guest's credit card information. § 41.49(2)(b). This information can be maintained in either electronic or paper form, but it must be "kept on the hotel premises in the guest reception or guest check-in area or in an office adjacent" thereto for a period of 90 days. § 41.49(3)(a).
Section 41.49(3)(a)-the only provision at issue here-states, in pertinent part, that hotel guest records "shall be made available to any officer of the Los Angeles Police Department for inspection," provided that "[w]henever possible, the inspection shall be conducted at a time and in a manner that minimizes any interference with the operation of the business." A hotel operator's failure to make his or her guest records available for police inspection is a misdemeanor punishable by up to six months in jail and a $1,000 fine. § 11.00(m) (general provision applicable to entire LAMC).
B
In 2003, respondents, a group of motel operators along with a lodging association, sued the city of Los Angeles (City or petitioner) in three consolidated cases challenging the constitutionality of § 41.49(3)(a). They sought declaratory and injunctive relief. The parties "agree[d] that the sole issue in the ... action [would be] a facial constitutional challenge" to § 41.49(3)(a) under the Fourth Amendment. App. 195. They further stipulated that respondents have been subjected to mandatory record inspections under the ordinance without consent or a warrant. Id., at 194-195.
Following a bench trial, the District Court entered judgment in favor of the City, holding that respondents' facial challenge failed because they lacked a reasonable expectation of privacy in the records subject to inspection. A divided panel of the Ninth Circuit affirmed on the same grounds.
The en banc court first determined that a police officer's nonconsensual inspection of hotel records under § 41.49 is a Fourth Amendment "search" because "[t]he business records covered by § 41.49 are the hotel's private property" and the hotel therefore "has the right to exclude others from prying into the[ir] contents."
Id.,
at 1061. Next, the court assessed "whether the searches authorized by § 41.49 are reasonable."
Id.,
at 1063. Relying on
Donovan v. Lone Steer, Inc.,
*2449
Two dissenting opinions were filed. The first dissent argued that facial relief should rarely be available for Fourth Amendment challenges, and was inappropriate here because the ordinance would be constitutional in those circumstances where police officers demand access to hotel records with a warrant in hand or exigent circumstances justify the search.
We granted certiorari, 574 U.S. ----,
II
We first clarify that facial challenges under the Fourth Amendment are not categorically barred or especially disfavored.
A
A facial challenge is an attack on a statute itself as opposed to a particular application. While such challenges are "the most difficult ... to mount successfully,"
United States v. Salerno,
Fourth Amendment challenges to statutes authorizing warrantless searches are no exception. Any claim to the contrary reflects a misunderstanding of our decision in
Sibron v. New York,
This statement from
Sibron
-which on its face might suggest an intent to foreclose all facial challenges to statutes authorizing warrantless searches-must be understood in the broader context of that case. In the same section of the opinion, the Court emphasized that the "operative
*2450
categories" of the New York law at issue were "susceptible of a wide variety of interpretations,"
id., at 60, 88 S.Ct. 1889and that "[the law] was passed too recently for the State's highest court to have ruled upon many of the questions involving potential intersections with federal constitutional guarantees,"
id., at 60, n. 20,
This reading of
Sibron
is confirmed by subsequent precedents. Since
Sibron,
the Court has entertained facial challenges under the Fourth Amendment to statutes authorizing warrantless searches. See,
e.g.,
Vernonia School District 47J v. Acton,
B
Petitioner principally contends that facial challenges to statutes authorizing warrantless searches must fail because such searches will never be unconstitutional in all applications. Cf.
Salerno,
Moreover, the City's argument misunderstands how courts analyze facial challenges. Under the most exacting standard the Court has prescribed for facial challenges, a plaintiff must establish that a "law is unconstitutional in all of its applications."
Washington State Grange v. Washington State Republican Party,
Similarly, when addressing a facial challenge to a statute authorizing warrantless searches, the proper focus of the constitutional inquiry is searches that the law actually authorizes, not those for which it is irrelevant. If exigency or a warrant justifies an officer's search, the subject of the search must permit it to proceed irrespective of whether it is authorized by statute. Statutes authorizing warrantless searches also do no work where the subject of a search has consented. Accordingly, the constitutional "applications" that petitioner claims prevent facial relief here are irrelevant to our analysis because they do not involve actual applications of the statute. 1
III
Turning to the merits of the particular claim before us, we hold that § 41.49(3)(a) is facially unconstitutional because it fails to provide hotel operators with an opportunity for precompliance review.
A
The Fourth Amendment protects "[t]he right of the people to be secure in
*2452
their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures." It further provides that "no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause." Based on this constitutional text, the Court has repeatedly held that " 'searches conducted outside the judicial process, without prior approval by [a] judge or [a] magistrate [judge], are
per se
unreasonable ... subject only to a few specifically established and well-delineated exceptions.' "
Arizona v. Gant,
Search regimes where no warrant is ever required may be reasonable where " 'special needs ... make the warrant and probable-cause requirement impracticable,' "
Skinner,
The Court has held that absent consent, exigent circumstances, or the like, in order for an administrative search to be constitutional, the subject of the search must be afforded an opportunity to obtain precompliance review before a neutral decisionmaker. See
See,
387 U.S., at 545,
A hotel owner who refuses to give an officer access to his or her registry can be arrested on the spot. The Court has held that business owners cannot reasonably be put to this kind of choice.
Camara,
387 U.S., at 533,
To be clear, we hold only that a hotel owner must be afforded an
opportunity
to have a neutral decisionmaker review an officer's demand to search the registry before he or she faces penalties for failing to comply. Actual review need only occur in those rare instances where a hotel operator objects to turning over the registry. Moreover, this opportunity can be provided without imposing onerous burdens on those charged with an administrative scheme's enforcement. For instance, respondents accept that the searches authorized by § 41.49(3)(a) would be constitutional if they were performed pursuant to an administrative subpoena. Tr. of Oral Arg. 36-37. These subpoenas, which are typically a simple form, can be issued by the individual seeking the record-here, officers in the field-without probable cause that a regulation is being infringed. See
See,
387 U.S., at 544,
In those instances, however, where a subpoenaed hotel operator believes that an attempted search is motivated by illicit purposes, respondents suggest it would be sufficient if he or she could move to quash the subpoena before any search takes place. Tr. of Oral Arg. 38-39. A neutral decisionmaker, including an administrative law judge, would then review the subpoenaed party's objections before deciding whether the subpoena is enforceable. Given the limited grounds on which a motion to quash can be granted, such challenges will likely be rare. And, in the even rarer event that an officer reasonably suspects that a hotel operator may tamper with the registry while the motion to quash is pending, he or she can guard the registry until the required hearing can occur, which ought not take long.
Riley v. California,
573 U.S. ----,
Procedures along these lines are ubiquitous. A 2002 report by the Department of Justice "identified approximately 335 existing administrative subpoena authorities held by various [federal] executive branch entities." Office of Legal Policy, Report to *2454 Congress on the Use of Administrative Subpoena Authorities by Executive Branch Agencies and Entities 3, online at http://www. justice.gov/archive/olp/rpt_to_congress.htm (All Internet materials as visited June 19, 2015, and available in Clerk of Court's case file). Their prevalence confirms what common sense alone would otherwise lead us to conclude: In most contexts, business owners can be afforded at least an opportunity to contest an administrative search's propriety without unduly compromising the government's ability to achieve its regulatory aims.
Of course administrative subpoenas are only one way in which an opportunity for precompliance review can be made available. But whatever the precise form, the availability of precompliance review alters the dynamic between the officer and the hotel to be searched, and reduces the risk that officers will use these administrative searches as a pretext to harass business owners.
Finally, we underscore the narrow nature of our holding. Respondents have not challenged and nothing in our opinion calls into question those parts of § 41.49 that require hotel operators to maintain guest registries containing certain information. And, even absent legislative action to create a procedure along the lines discussed above, see supra, at 2452 - 2453, police will not be prevented from obtaining access to these documents. As they often do, hotel operators remain free to consent to searches of their registries and police can compel them to turn them over if they have a proper administrative warrant-including one that was issued ex parte -or if some other exception to the warrant requirement applies, including exigent circumstances. 4
B
Rather than arguing that § 41.49(3)(a) is constitutional under the general administrative search doctrine, the City and Justice SCALIA contend that hotels are "closely regulated," and that the ordinance is facially valid under the more relaxed standard that applies to searches of this category of businesses. Brief for Petitioner 28-47; post, at 2459. They are wrong on both counts.
Over the past 45 years, the Court has identified only four industries that "have such a history of government oversight that no reasonable expectation of privacy ... could exist for a proprietor over the stock of such an enterprise,"
Barlow's, Inc.,
*2455
Dewey,
Moreover, "[t]he clear import of our cases is that the closely regulated industry ... is the exception."
Barlow's, Inc.,
Petitioner attempts to recast this hodgepodge of regulations as a comprehensive scheme by referring to a "centuries-old tradition" of warrantless searches of hotels. Brief for Petitioner 34-36. History is relevant when determining whether an industry is closely regulated. See,
e.g.,
Burger,
Even if we were to find that hotels are pervasively regulated, § 41.49 would need to satisfy three additional criteria to be reasonable under the Fourth Amendment: (1) "[T]here must be a 'substantial' government interest that informs the regulatory scheme pursuant to which the inspection is made"; (2) "the warrantless inspections must be 'necessary' to further [the] regulatory scheme"; and (3) "the statute's inspection program, in terms of the certainty and regularity of its application, [must] provid[e] a constitutionally adequate substitute for a warrant."
Burger,
The City claims that affording hotel operators any opportunity for precompliance review would fatally undermine the scheme's efficacy by giving operators a chance to falsify their records. Brief for Petitioner 41-42. The Court has previously rejected this exact argument, which could be made regarding any recordkeeping requirement. See
Barlow's, Inc
.,
As explained above, nothing in our decision today precludes an officer from conducting a surprise inspection by obtaining an
ex parte
warrant or, where an officer reasonably suspects the registry would be altered, from guarding the registry pending a hearing on a motion to quash. See
Barlow's, Inc.,
Section 41.49 is also constitutionally deficient under the "certainty and regularity" prong of the closely regulated industries test because it fails sufficiently to constrain police officers' discretion as to which hotels to search and under what circumstances. While the Court has upheld inspection schemes of closely regulated industries that called for searches at least four times a year,
Dewey,
* * *
For the foregoing reasons, we agree with the Ninth Circuit that § 41.49(3)(a) is facially invalid insofar as it fails to provide any opportunity for precompliance review before a hotel must give its guest registry to the police for inspection. Accordingly, *2457 the judgment of the Ninth Circuit is affirmed.
It is so ordered.
Justice SCALIA, with whom THE CHIEF JUSTICE and Justice THOMAS join, dissenting.
The city of Los Angeles, like many jurisdictions across the country, has a law that requires motels, hotels, and other places of overnight accommodation (hereinafter motels) to keep a register containing specified information about their guests. Los Angeles Municipal Code (LAMC) § 41.49(2) (2015). The purpose of this recordkeeping requirement is to deter criminal conduct, on the theory that criminals will be unwilling to carry on illicit activities in motel rooms if they must provide identifying information at check-in. Because this deterrent effect will only be accomplished if motels actually do require guests to provide the required information, the ordinance also authorizes police to conduct random spot checks of motels' guest registers to ensure that they are properly maintained. § 41.49(3). The ordinance limits these spot checks to the four corners of the register, and does not authorize police to enter any nonpublic area of the motel. To the extent possible, police must conduct these spot checks at times that will minimize any disruption to a motel's business.
The parties do not dispute the governmental interests at stake. Motels not only provide housing to vulnerable transient populations, they are also a particularly attractive site for criminal activity ranging from drug dealing and prostitution to human trafficking. Offering privacy and anonymity on the cheap, they have been employed as prisons for migrants smuggled across the border and held for ransom, see Sanchez, Immigrant Smugglers Become More Ruthless, Washington Post, June 28, 2004, p. A3; Wagner, Human Smuggling, Arizona Republic, July 23, 2006, p. A1, and rendezvous sites where child sex workers meet their clients on threat of violence from their procurers.
Nevertheless, the Court today concludes that Los Angeles's ordinance is "unreasonable" inasmuch as it permits police to flip through a guest register to ensure it is being filled out without first providing an opportunity for the motel operator to seek judicial review. Because I believe that such a limited inspection of a guest register is eminently reasonable under the circumstances presented, I dissent.
I
I assume that respondents may bring a facial challenge to the City's ordinance under the Fourth Amendment. Even so, their claim must fail because, as discussed
infra,
the law is constitutional in most, if not all, of its applications. See
United States v. Salerno,
Article III limits our jurisdiction to "Cases" and "Controversies." Accordingly, "[f]ederal courts may not 'decide questions that cannot affect the rights of litigants in the case before them' or give 'opinion[s] advising what the law would be upon a hypothetical state of facts.' "
Chafin v. Chafin,
568 U.S. ----, ----,
The upshot is that the effect of a given case is a function not of the plaintiff's characterization of his challenge, but the narrowness or breadth of the ground that the Court relies upon in disposing of it. If a plaintiff elects not to present any case-specific facts in support of a claim that a law is unconstitutional-as is the case here-he will limit the grounds on which a Court may find for him to highly abstract rules that would have broad application in future cases. The decision to do this might be a poor strategic move, especially in a Fourth Amendment case, where the reasonableness of a search is a highly factbound question and general, abstract rules are hard to come by. Cf.
Sibron v. New York,
II
The Fourth Amendment provides, in relevant part, that "[t]he 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." Grammatically, the two clauses of the Amendment seem to be independent-and directed at entirely different actors. The former tells the executive what it must do when it conducts a search, and the latter tells the judiciary what it must do when it issues a search warrant. But in an effort to guide courts in applying the Search-and-Seizure Clause's indeterminate reasonableness standard, and to maintain coherence in our case law, we have used the Warrant Clause as a guidepost for assessing the reasonableness of a search, and have erected a framework of presumptions applicable to broad categories of searches conducted by executive officials. Our case law has repeatedly recognized, however, that these are mere presumptions, and the only constitutional requirement is that a search be reasonable.
When, for example, a search is conducted to enforce an administrative regime rather than to investigate criminal wrongdoing, we have been willing to modify the probable-cause standard so that a warrant may issue absent individualized suspicion of wrongdoing. Thus, our cases say a warrant may issue to inspect a structure for fire-code violations on the basis of such factors as the passage of time, the nature of the building, and the condition of the neighborhood.
Camara v. Municipal Court of City and County of San Francisco,
*2459
One exception to normal warrant requirements applies to searches of closely regulated businesses. "[W]hen an entrepreneur embarks upon such a business, he has voluntarily chosen to subject himself to a full arsenal of governmental regulation," and so a warrantless search to enforce those regulations is not unreasonable
.
Marshall v. Barlow's, Inc.,
Los Angeles's ordinance easily meets these standards.
A
In determining whether a business is closely regulated, this Court has looked to factors including the duration of the regulatory tradition,
id., at 705-707, 107 S.Ct. 2636
Colonnade Catering Corp. v. United States,
Reflecting the unique public role of motels and their commercial forebears, governments have long subjected these businesses to unique public duties, and have established inspection regimes to ensure compliance. As Blackstone observed, "Inns, in particular, being intended for the lodging and receipt of travellers, may be indicted, suppressed, and the inn-keepers fined, if they refuse to entertain a traveller without a very sufficient cause: for thus to frustrate the end of their institution is held to be disorderly behavior." 4 W. Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England 168 (1765). Justice Story similarly recognized "[t]he soundness of the public policy of subjecting particular classes of persons to extraordinary responsibility, in cases where an extraordinary confidence is necessarily reposed in them, and there is an extraordinary temptation to fraud, or danger of plunder." J. Story, Commentaries on the Law of Bailments § 464, pp. 487-488 (5th ed. 1851). Accordingly, in addition to the obligation to receive any paying guest, "innkeepers are bound to take, not merely ordinary care, but uncommon care, of the goods, money, and baggage of their guests," id., § 470, at 495, as travellers "are obliged to rely almost implicitly on the good faith of innholders, whose education and morals are none of the best, and who might have frequent opportunities of associating with ruffians and pilferers," id., § 471, at 498.
These obligations were not merely aspirational. At the time of the founding, searches-indeed, warrantless searches-of inns and similar places of public accommodation were commonplace. For example, although Massachusetts was perhaps *2460 the State most protective against government searches, "the state code of 1788 still allowed tithingmen to search public houses of entertainment on every Sabbath without any sort of warrant." W. Cuddihy, Fourth Amendment: Origins and Original Meaning 602-1791, 743 (2009). 1
As this evidence demonstrates, the regulatory tradition governing motels is not only longstanding, but comprehensive. And the tradition continues in Los Angeles. The City imposes an occupancy tax upon transients who stay in motels, LAMC § 21.7.3, and makes the motel owner responsible for collecting it, § 21.7.5. It authorizes city officials "to enter [a motel], free of charge, during business hours" in order to "inspect and examine" them to determine whether these tax provisions have been complied with. §§ 21.7.9, 21.15. It requires all motels to obtain a "Transient Occupancy Registration Certificate," which must be displayed on the premises. § 21.7.6. State law requires motels to "post in a conspicuous place ... a statement of rate or range of rates by the day for lodging," and forbids any charges in excess of those posted rates. Cal. Civ.Code Ann. § 1863 (West 2010). Hotels must change bed linens between guests, Cal.Code Regs., tit. 25, § 40 (2015), and they must offer guests the option not to have towels and linens laundered daily, LAMC § 121.08. "Multiuse drinking utensils" may be placed in guest rooms only if they are "thoroughly washed and sanitized after each use" and "placed in protective bags." Cal.Code Regs., tit. 17, § 30852. And state authorities, like their municipal counterparts, "may at reasonable times enter and inspect any hotels, motels, or other public places" to ensure compliance. § 30858.
The regulatory regime at issue here is thus substantially
more
comprehensive than the regulations governing junkyards in
Burger,
where licensing, inventory-recording, and permit-posting requirements were found sufficient to qualify the industry as closely regulated.
Finally, this ordinance is not an outlier. The City has pointed us to more than 100 similar register-inspection laws in cities and counties across the country, Brief for Petitioner 36, and n. 3, and that is far from exhaustive. In all, municipalities in at least 41 States have laws similar to Los Angeles's, Brief for National League of Cities et al. as Amici Curiae 16-17, and at least 8 States have their own laws authorizing register inspections, Brief for California et al. as Amici Curiae 12-13.
This copious evidence is surely enough to establish that "[w]hen a [motel operator] chooses to engage in this pervasively regulated business ... he does so with the knowledge that his business records ... will be subject to effective inspection."
United States v. Biswell,
The Court's observation that "[o]ver the past 45 years, the Court has identified only four industries" as closely regulated,
ante,
at 2454, is neither here nor there. Since we first concluded in
Colonnade Catering
that warrantless searches of closely regulated businesses are reasonable, we have only identified
one
industry as
not
closely regulated, see
Barlow's,
B
The City's ordinance easily satisfies the remaining Burger requirements: It furthers a substantial governmental interest, it is necessary to achieving that interest, and it provides an adequate substitute for a search warrant.
Neither respondents nor the Court question the substantial interest of the City in deterring criminal activity. See Brief for Respondents 34-41; ante, at 2455. The private pain and public costs imposed by drug dealing, prostitution, and human trafficking are beyond contention, and motels provide an obvious haven for those who trade in human misery.
Warrantless inspections are also necessary to advance this interest. Although the Court acknowledges that law enforcement can enter a motel room without a warrant when exigent circumstances exist, see ante, at 2454, n. 4, the whole reason criminals use motel rooms in the first place is that they offer privacy and secrecy, so that police will never come to discover these exigencies. The recordkeeping requirement, which all parties admit is permissible, therefore operates by deterring crime. Criminals, who depend on the anonymity that motels offer, will balk when confronted with a motel's demand that they produce identification. And a motel's evasion of the recordkeeping requirement fosters crime. In San Diego, for example, motel owners were indicted for collaborating with members of the Crips street gang *2462 in the prostitution of underage girls; the motel owners "set aside rooms apart from the rest of their legitimate customers where girls and women were housed, charged the gang members/pimps a higher rate for the rooms where 'dates' or 'tricks' took place, and warned the gang members of inquiries by law enforcement." Office of the Attorney General, Cal. Dept. of Justice, The State of Human Trafficking in California 25 (2012). The warrantless inspection requirement provides a necessary incentive for motels to maintain their registers thoroughly and accurately: They never know when law enforcement might drop by to inspect.
Respondents and the Court acknowledge that inspections are necessary to achieve the purposes of the recordkeeping regime, but insist that warrantless inspections are not. They have to acknowledge, however, that the motel operators who conspire with drug dealers and procurers may demand precompliance judicial review simply as a pretext to buy time for making fraudulent entries in their guest registers. The Court therefore must resort to arguing that warrantless inspections are not "necessary" because other alternatives exist.
The Court suggests that police could obtain an administrative subpoena to search a guest register and, if a motel moves to quash, the police could "guar[d] the registry pending a hearing" on the motion.
Ante,
at 2456. This proposal is equal parts 1984 and Alice in Wonderland. It protects motels from government inspection of their registers by authorizing government agents to seize the registers
2
(if "guarding" entails forbidding the register to be moved) or to upset guests by a prolonged police presence at the motel. The Court also notes that police can obtain an
ex parte
warrant before conducting a register inspection.
Ante,
at 2456. Presumably such warrants could issue without probable cause of wrongdoing by a particular motel, see
Camara,
387 U.S., at 535-536,
But all that discussion is in any case irrelevant. The administrative search need only be reasonable. It is not the burden of Los Angeles to show that there *2463 are no less restrictive means of achieving the City's purposes. Sequestration or ex parte warrants were possible alternatives to the warrantless search regimes approved by this Court in Colonnade Catering, Biswell, Dewey, and Burger . By importing a least-restrictive-means test into Burger 's Fourth Amendment framework, today's opinion implicitly overrules that entire line of cases.
Finally, the City's ordinance provides an adequate substitute for a warrant. Warrants "advise the owner of the scope and objects of the search, beyond which limits the inspector is not expected to proceed."
Barlow's,
Los Angeles's ordinance provides that the guest register must be kept in the guest reception or guest check-in area, or in an adjacent office, and that it "be made available to any officer of the Los Angeles Police Department for inspection. Whenever possible, the inspection shall be conducted at a time and in a manner that minimizes any interference with the operation of the business." LAMC § 41.49(3). Nothing in the ordinance authorizes law enforcement to enter a nonpublic part of the motel. Compare this to the statute upheld in
Colonnade Catering,
which provided that " '[t]he Secretary or his delegate may enter, in the daytime, any building or place where any articles or objects subject to tax are made, produced, or kept, so far as it may be necessary for the purpose of examining said articles or objects,' "
The Court claims that Los Angeles's ordinance confers too much discretion because it does not adequately limit the frequency of searches. Without a trace of irony, the Court tries to distinguish Los Angeles's law from the laws upheld in Dewey and Burger by pointing out that the latter regimes required inspections at least four times a year and on a " 'regular basis,' " respectively. Ante, at 2456. But the warrantless police searches of a business "10 times a day, every day, for three months" that the Court envisions under Los Angeles's regime, ante, at 2453, are entirely consistent with the regimes in Dewey and Burger ; 10 times a day, every day, is "at least four times a year," and on a (much too) " 'regular basis.' " Ante, at 2456.
*2464 That is not to say that the Court's hypothetical searches are necessarily constitutional. It is only to say that Los Angeles's ordinance presents no greater risk that such a hypothetical will materialize than the laws we have already upheld. As in our earlier cases, we should leave it to lower courts to consider on a case-by-case basis whether warrantless searches have been conducted in an unreasonably intrusive or harassing manner.
III
The Court reaches its wrongheaded conclusion not simply by misapplying our precedent, but by mistaking our precedent for the Fourth Amendment itself. Rather than bother with the text of that Amendment, the Court relies exclusively on our administrative-search cases,
Camara,
See v. Seattle,
An administrative, warrantless-search ordinance that narrowly limits the scope of searches to a single business record, that does not authorize entry upon premises not open to the public, and that is supported by the need to prevent fabrication of guest registers, is, to say the least, far afield from the laws at issue in the cases the Court relies upon. The Court concludes that such minor intrusions, permissible when the police are trying to tamp down the market in stolen auto parts, are "unreasonable" when police are instead attempting to stamp out the market in child sex slaves.
Because I believe that the limited warrantless searches authorized by Los Angeles's ordinance are reasonable under the circumstances, I respectfully dissent.
Justice ALITO, with whom Justice THOMASjoins, dissenting.
After today, the city of Los Angeles can never, under any circumstances, enforce its 116-year-old requirement that hotels make their registers available to police officers. That is because the Court holds that § 41.49(3)(a) of the Los Angeles Municipal Code (2015) is
facially
unconstitutional. Before entering a judgment with such serious safety and federalism implications, the Court must conclude that every application of this law is unconstitutional-
i.e.,
that " 'no set of circumstances exists under which the [law] would be valid.' "
Ante,
at 2450 (quoting
United States v. Salerno,
Example One. The police have probable cause to believe that a register contains evidence of a crime. They go to a judge and get a search warrant. The hotel operator, however, refuses to surrender the register, but instead stashes it away. Officers could tear the hotel apart looking for it. Or they could simply order the operator to produce it. The Fourth Amendment does not create a right to defy a warrant. Hence § 41.49(3)(a) could be constitutionally applied in this scenario. Indeed, the Court concedes that it is proper to apply a California obstruction of justice law in such a case. See
ante,
at 2451 - 2452, n. 1; Brief for Respondents 49. How could applying
*2465
a city law with a similar effect be different? No one thinks that overlapping laws are unconstitutional. See,
e.g.,
Yates v. United States,
574 U.S. ----, ----,
In any event, the Los Angeles ordinance is arguably broader in at least one important respect than the California obstruction of justice statute on which the Court relies. Ante, at 2451 - 2452, n. 1. The state law applies when a person "willfully resists, delays, or obstructs any public officer ... in the discharge or attempt to discharge any duty of his or her office." Cal.Penal Code Ann. § 148(a)(1)(West 2014). In the example set out above, suppose that the hotel operator, instead of hiding the register, simply refused to tell the police where it is located. The Court cites no California case holding that such a refusal would be unlawful, and the city of Los Angeles submits that under California law, "[o]bstruction statutes prohibit a hotel owner from obstructing a search, but they do not require affirmative assistance." Reply Brief 5. The Los Angeles ordinance, by contrast, unequivocally requires a hotel operator to make the register available on request.
Example Two. A murderer has kidnapped a woman with the intent to rape and kill her and there is reason to believe he is holed up in a certain motel. The Fourth Amendment's reasonableness standard accounts for exigent circumstances. See,
e.g.,
Brigham City v. Stuart,
Example Three. A neighborhood of "pay by the hour" motels is a notorious gathering spot for child-sex traffickers. Police officers drive through the neighborhood late one night and see unusual amounts of activity at a particular motel. The officers stop and ask the motel operator for the names of those who paid with cash to rent rooms for less than three hours. The operator refuses to provide the information. Requesting to see the register-and arresting the operator for failing to provide it-would be reasonable under the "totality of the circumstances."
Ohio v. Robinette,
Example Four. A motel is operated by a dishonest employee. He has been charging more for rooms than he records, all the while pocketing the difference. The owner finds out and eagerly consents to a police inspection of the register. But when officers arrive and ask to see the register, the operator hides it. The Fourth Amendment does not allow the operator's refusal to defeat the owner's consent. See,
e.g.,
Mancusi v. DeForte,
*2466 Accordingly, it would not violate the Fourth Amendment to arrest the operator for failing to make the register "available to any officer of the Los Angeles Police Department for inspection." § 41.49(3)(a).
Example Five. A "mom and pop" motel always keeps its old-fashioned guest register open on the front desk. Anyone who wants to can walk up and leaf through it. (Such motels are not as common as they used to be, but Los Angeles is a big place.) The motel has no reasonable expectation of privacy in the register, and no one doubts that police officers-like anyone else-can enter into the lobby. See,
e.g.,
Florida v. Jardines,
These are just five examples. There are many more. The Court rushes past examples like these by suggesting that § 41.49(3)(a) does no "work" in such scenarios. Ante, at 2451. That is not true. Under threat of legal sanction, this law orders hotel operators to do things they do not want to do. To be sure, there may be circumstances in which § 41.49(3)(a)'s command conflicts with the Fourth Amendment, and in those circumstances the Fourth Amendment is supreme. See U.S. Const., Art. VI, cl. 2. But no different from any other local law, the remedy for such circumstances should be an as-applied injunction limited to the conflict with the Fourth Amendment . Such an injunction would protect a hotel from being "searched 10 times a day, every day, for three months, without any violation being found." Ante, at 2453. But unlike facial invalidation, an as-applied injunction does not produce collateral damage. Section 41.49(3)(a) should be enforceable in those many cases in which the Fourth Amendment is not violated.
There are serious arguments that the Fourth Amendment's application to warrantless searches and seizures is inherently inconsistent with facial challenges. See
Sibron v. New York,
Relatedly, the United States claims that a statute authorizing warrantless searches may still have independent force if it imposes a penalty for failing to cooperate in a search conducted under a warrant or in an exigency. See Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 19. This argument gets things backwards. An otherwise facially unconstitutional statute cannot be saved from invalidation based solely on the existence of a penalty provision that applies when searches are not actually authorized by the statute. This argument is especially unconvincing where, as here, an independent obstruction of justice statute imposes a penalty for "willfully, resist[ing], delay[ing], or obstruct[ing] any public officer ... in the discharge or attempt to discharge any duty of his or her office of employment." Cal.Penal Code Ann. § 148(a)(1)(West 2014).
Respondents contend that § 41.49's principal purpose instead is to facilitate criminal investigation. Brief for Respondents 44-47. Because we find that the searches authorized by § 41.49 are unconstitutional even if they serve the City's asserted purpose, we decline to address this argument.
Justice SCALIA professes to be baffled at the idea that we could suggest that in certain circumstances, police officers may seize something that they cannot immediately search. Post, at 2461 - 2462 (dissenting opinion). But that is what this Court's cases have explicitly endorsed, including Riley just last Term.
In suggesting that our holding today will somehow impede law enforcement from achieving its important aims, Justice SCALIA relies on instances where hotels were used as "prisons for migrants smuggled across the border and held for ransom" or as "rendezvous sites where child sex workers meet their clients on threat of violence from their procurers." See post, at 2457. It is hard to imagine circumstances more exigent than these.
Justice SCALIA's effort to depict hotels as raising a comparable degree of risk rings hollow. See post, at 2457, 2463 - 2464. Hotels-like practically all commercial premises or services-can be put to use for nefarious ends. But unlike the industries that the Court has found to be closely regulated, hotels are not intrinsically dangerous.
As Beale helpfully confirms, "[f]rom the earliest times the fundamental characteristic of an inn has been its public nature. It is a public house, a house of public entertainment, or, as it is legally phrased, a common inn." J. Beale, The Law of Innkeepers and Hotels § 11, p. 10 (1906).
We are not at all "baffled at the idea that ... police officers may seize something that they cannot immediately search." Ante, at 2453, n. 3. We are baffled at the idea that anyone would think a seizure of required records less intrusive than a visual inspection.
Reference
- Full Case Name
- CITY OF LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, for Petitioner v. Naranjibhai PATEL, Et Al.
- Cited By
- 235 cases
- Status
- Published