SCOTUS evaluates whether cops need probable cause to enter homes during emergencies

WASHINGTON (CN) — The Supreme Court grappled Wednesday over what legal standard police officers should apply when trying to enter an individual’s home to respond to an emergency situation such as a potential suicide.

Wednesday’s arguments center on the so-called “emergency aid exception” to the Fourth Amendment, which allows police officers to conduct a warrantless search if they have “reasonable suspicion” that there is an emergency and an immediate need to protect others or themselves from harm.

Specifically, petitioner William Trevor Case urged the court to make clear that officers need probable cause that such an emergency truly exists before they can enter without a warrant.

Case, an Army veteran from Montana, was convicted of assaulting a police officer after his ex-girlfriend called 911 to report Case was behaving erratically and threatening to commit suicide. She also warned that Case said if police intervened, he “would shoot them all too.”

Fred Rowley Jr., attorney of Wilson Sonsini and representing Case, urged the court to adopt probable cause as the necessary standard for an officer to enter a home without a warrant, warning that allowing the lower reasonable suspicion standard to stand would empower officers to “backdoor [their] way into a criminal investigation.”

Rowley said that an “invasion of the home” was the “chief evil” against which the Fourth Amendment protects against, and that diluting the probable cause section would invite abuse by the police.

Without probable cause, he warned, police could make up an emergency to circumvent the need for a warrant, and receive very little scrutiny after the fact.

Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, both George W. Bush appointees, expressed concern about setting probable cause as the necessary standard, rather than the “objectively reasonable basis” standard it set in the 2006 case Brigham City v. Stuart .

Alito said that under Rowley’s standard, officers would be unable to enter a home unless they could clearly see a gun pointed at an individual or they spot a body on the ground.

Rowley argued that requiring probable cause would limit the very real threat of “swatting,” where individuals make hoax emergency calls, most commonly bomb threats, to cause a large-scale law enforcement deployment at a school, hospital, government building or politician’s home.

Rowley said that if officers were required to obtain probable cause before raiding a swatting victim’s home, they’d have to make some effort to verify their call before entering the building, ideally declawing the practice.

Montana Department of Justice attorney Christian Corrigan urged the justices to reject Rowley’s position, arguing that he was attempting to graft the two clauses of the Fourth Amendment — that individuals are protected against unreasonable searches and that a warrant requires probable cause — into a single provision.

Corrigan said the court’s rule in Brigham City already addressed the issue and that “objective reasonable belief” is the proper standard.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, a Barack Obama appointee, said that the relevant standard should balance both the police’s interest in responding to emergencies and an individual’s private property rights.

However, she noted that individuals with mental illnesses — such as Case — are 16 times more likely to be killed during a police encounter, according to a 2015 report by the Treatment Advocacy Center.

When officers arrived at Case’s home for a welfare check — already familiar with Case’s history of “suicide by cop” threats — they looked through his windows and did not see Case, blood or any other signs of injury. Instead, they saw an empty handgun holster, beer cans and a notepad they thought was a suicide note.

The officers waited 40 minutes to enter Case’s home, during which time they decided against calling Case or his family and made no effort to obtain a warrant. Upon entering, they saw Case holding a handgun and shot him in the arm and abdomen.

At trial, Case sought to suppress the firearm and other evidence from his home because the police did not have probable cause to enter without a warrant and deliver emergency aid. The trial judge rejected Case’s argument, leading a jury to convict him on the felony assault charge.

On appeal, the Montana Supreme Court ruled 4-3 against Case, holding that probable cause is “superfluous” when an officer is “acting in a caretaker’s capacity” and the officer’s “reasons for a warrantless entry” are “totally divorced” from the investigation of the crime.

The dissenting judges noted that the Supreme Court, in the 2021 case Caniglia v. Strom had already rejected any standalone “community caretaker” exception to the warrant requirement, and that the well-established exigent circumstances exception still requires probable cause to clear the need for a warrant.

The case comes amid growing concerns regarding law enforcement conduct across the country, particularly by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, since President Donald Trump deployed the National Guard in Los Angeles in June to support ICE raids.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh, a Trump appointee, wrote in a solo concurrence for the recent shadow docket decision in Noem v. Perdomo that ICE agents can detain individuals for questioning if they have a “reasonable suspicion” that the individual entered the country without permission.

He suggested that immigrants in the country legally would be quickly released if they got swept up in such stops, apparently unaware of the growing number of cases where legal residents have been detained for lengthy periods of time and even deported.

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