Standing in the middle of his own farm property, Tom Manuel’s body bristled at a question laced with direction from an armed game warden who possessed no search warrant or probable cause.
“No sir. I’m not giving you my gun,” Manuel answered. “This is my land. This is my rifle. I have every right to it.”
Welcome to a fundamental property rights battle taking place across the United States. Government officials, at both the state and federal levels, claim power over entrance, exit, searches, and surveillance on private land—all without warrant, cause, reasonable suspicion, or Fourth Amendment restrictions.
Stemming from the Open Fields doctrine, a century-old Supreme Court ruling, government officials including wildlife agents, environmental inspectors, immigration officials, and other agency reps, have unbounded access to private land with no restrictions on time, frequency, duration, or scope.
Represented by Institute for Justice, Manuel has filed a lawsuit to end warrantless intrusions in Louisiana, the fourth state after Tennessee, Pennsylvania, and Virginia to see recent challenges to the Open Fields doctrine. “Think about where we are,” he says. “With absolutely no warrant or reason, the government can enter your property and stop you, spy on you, search you, and stay as long as they like—and we’re supposed to accept that as constitutional. Something has gone way, way off in this country.”...more
Per the Fourth Amendment, passed as part of the Bill of Rights in 1791, Americans rely on a guarantee of security in their “persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.” However, the federal government contends Fourth Amendment protections do not extend to land.
“What happened to our state constitutions and the Constitution?” Manuel asks. “I’m supposed to pretend the law allows government officials to enter private land, stay as long as they want, use drones, use night vision, use cameras, and whatever other activity they choose, all without any approval from a judge or a warrant or cause? Who in the heck believes that’s justified by Open Fields?
In 1924, SCOTUS birthed the Open Fields framework in a Prohibition-era case involving illegal liquor, Hester v. United States, and declared: “the special protection accorded by the Fourth Amendment to the people in their ‘persons, houses, papers, and effects,’ is not extended to the open fields.”
Doubling down in 1984, SCOTUS added weight to the Open Fields doctrine in a marijuana case, Oliver v. United States.
For a more extensive discussion of the doctrine go to this page of the Legal Information Institute's website.
For a critique of the current doctrine, go to this page of the Institute for Justice's website.
1 comment:
There are several other special benefits related to Open Fields
One of those is the federal inclusion of state officials, usually Fish and Game employees, in federal raids when the federal presence by itself lacks personal and subject matter jurisdiction. Federal agents have learned to graft their agency onto legitimate local/state jurisdiction because they lack authority to act as law enforcement in the absence of a cession of jurisdiction from a given state.
That jurisdiction question along with the Chevron Deference doctrine all need to be tossed in the same scrap bin with open fields.
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