“Community Caretaking” Alone Does Not Justify Warrantless Home Entry, Supreme Court Holds
This case law update was written by James P. Garay Heelan, an attorney at the law firm of Shaw Bransford & Roth, where he has practiced federal personnel and employment law since 2012. Mr. Heelan represents federal personnel across the Executive Branch, including career senior executives, law enforcement officers, foreign service officers, intelligence officers, and agencies in matters of federal personnel and employment law.
“Community caretaking” does not create a standalone doctrine that justifies warrantless searches and seizures in the home, a unanimous Supreme Court recently held.
During an argument in their Rhode Island home, Edward Caniglia put a gun on the dining room table and asked his wife, “why don’t you just shoot me and get me out of my misery.” She subsequently left and spent the night at a motel. The next morning, Edward’s wife could not find him and telephoned the police to request a welfare check.
When officers arrived at the Caniglia home, they found Edward on the porch. Although Edward denied to officers that he was suicidal, officers still believed he posed a risk to himself or others. After telling Edward they would not confiscate his guns, Edward agreed to go to the hospital for a psychiatric evaluation. After Edward left the home, officers told his wife that Edward had consented to their seizing his weapons. She then guided the officers inside the home where they seized Edward’s two handguns.
Edward subsequently filed a Section 1983 claim against the city and the individual officers for violating his Fourth Amendment rights when they entered his home and his weapons without a warrant.
The federal District Court granted the defendants’ motion for summary judgment, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit affirmed that decision. The First Circuit’s decision turned on an application of the Supreme Court’s holding in the 1973 case of Cady v. Dombrowski, in which the high court held that law enforcement’s “community caretaking functions” allowed the warrantless search of an impounded vehicle to seize an unsecured weapon. On that precedent, the First Circuit held, the “community caretaking” exception justified the officers’ search of the Caniglia home and the seizure of Edward’s weapons. The U.S. Supreme Court subsequently agreed to hear the case.
At oral argument in March 2021, as FEDagent reported, justices openly struggled with the issue of when law enforcement can enter a home without a warrant for the purposes of checking on an occupant’s health or safety. Some justices worried that ruling in Edward’s favor would create legal obstacles for law enforcement to respond quickly to reports about imminent or continuing harm to the people inside. Those considerations were balanced against the traditional view that the home is off-limits to law enforcement without a warrant.
Last week, a unanimous Supreme Court reversed the First Circuit, holding “[w]hat is reasonable for vehicles is different from what is reasonable for homes.”
Writing for the Court, Justice Clarence Thomas began his analysis by acknowledging that the Fourth Amendment “does not prohibit all unwelcome intrusions on private property, only unreasonable ones.” The Supreme Court has permitted intrusions onto homes pursuant to a warrant, and without a warrant for exigent circumstances such as to “render emergency assistance to an injured occupant or to protect an occupant from imminent harm.” But, Justice Thomas wrote, the First Circuity’s “community caretaking” rule “goes beyond anything this Court has recognized.”
Justice Thomas then deconstructed the First Circuit’s erroneous reliance on Cady. “True, Cady also involved a warrantless search for a firearm. But the location of that search was an impounded vehicle – not a home – a constitutional difference that the opinion repeatedly stressed.” The opinion then concluded by stating the Supreme Court has repeatedly declined to expand the scope of warrantless entry exceptions to permit entry into the home.
The Supreme Court thus vacated the First Circuit’s decision and remanded the case back to the appeals court for further proceedings.
Read the Supreme Court’s full opinion in Caniglia v. Strom.
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