The Supreme Court seemed skeptical of government arguments this morning that the “community caretaking” exception to the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement should be expanded to allow police to seize guns without a warrant in a person’s home.
The case comes as President Joe Biden and congressional Democrats press for aggressive new restrictions on Second Amendment gun ownership rights, including controversial “red flag” laws that allow gun seizures from law-abiding gun owners with limited due process, in the wake of highly publicized deadly mass shootings at a Boulder, Colorado supermarket on March 22 and at Atlanta, Georgia-area spas on March 16.
In the case at hand, the Biden administration argued for an expansion of government power, telling the Supreme Court that police should be allowed to enter homes without a warrant and seize handguns.
The case, Caniglia v. Strom, court file 20-157, is on appeal from the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals. Oral arguments March 24 lasted 103 minutes, exceeding the allotted 60 minutes.
The community caretaking doctrine holds that police don’t always operate as law enforcement officials investigating wrongdoing, but sometimes as caretakers to prevent harm in emergency situations.
Police generally cannot conduct searches of private property without consent or a warrant.
In Cady v. Dombrowski (1973) the Supreme Court held police may conduct warrantless searches related to “community caretaking functions,” but only in the context of “vehicle accidents.” Since then the principle has become “a catchall for a wide range of responsibilities that police officers must discharge aside from their criminal enforcement activities,” as the 1st Circuit stated in the Caniglia case.
Edward Caniglia has no criminal history and no record of violence. He had been married to his wife for 22 years when, on Aug. 20, 2015, they had a disagreement inside their Cranston, Rhode Island, home.
The argument escalated and he placed an unloaded gun on the living room table, saying, “Why don’t you just shoot me and get me out of my misery?”
She then spent the night at a motel. She tried to reach him by telephone and became concerned when he didn’t pick up. She told police her husband might be suicidal and asked them to conduct a welfare check.
The police called the husband, whom they said “sounded fine.” At the home, the husband told police his “just shoot me” comment happened because he “couldn’t take it anymore.”
The husband went to a local hospital briefly after police assured him they wouldn’t take his two handguns. After he left, they seized his guns without a warrant, telling the wife his life and others could be in danger if they left the guns in the home.
“After the officers falsely represented to Mrs. Caniglia that Petitioner had consented, she led the officers to the guns,” Caniglia stated in a brief.
The couple and a lawyer asked the police to return the guns and their requests were refused.
The husband sued, but the district court and the 1st Circuit allowed the search under the community caretaking exception. The husband argued in his Supreme Court brief that the exception shouldn’t be applied inside “the home–the most protected of all private spaces.”
During oral arguments, the justices of the Supreme Court seemed to be searching for a legal test to cover Caniglia’s situation, posing a long series of hypothetical questions about what situations might justify police entering a home without a warrant.
Warrantless entries to homes by police are unreasonable in the absence of exigent circumstances, his attorney, Shay Dvoretzky, told the court.
The Fourth Amendment protects the home “in a special way,” he said. If there is no exigency, “police shouldn’t be going in.”
Justice Clarence Thomas asked Dvoretzky if a police officer enters a home and finds someone unconscious on the floor, if that person could sue the police.
“If he goes in without an objective basis and finds a problem that would not absolve him of liability,” the attorney said.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh quipped that developing legal tests to cover various situations was “great,” but said in the real world police have to make split-second decisions.
“Every single day on average there are 65 suicides” by gunshot, he said, adding that Dvoretzky’s position would make police back away from suicide checks.
Marc DeSisto, attorney for Cranston, said “an absolute prohibition against warrantless entry is wrong.” Such entries should be allowed when they are “objectively reasonable.” Police officers “cannot turns their backs and walk away.”
Justice Samuel Alito told DeSisto that people are concerned that the caretaking exception “has no clear boundaries.”
The lawyer replied that “the touchstone of the Fourth Amendment is reasonableness.”
He added minutes later that “the text and meaning of the Fourth Amendment is not offended by caretaking activity in favor of the most vulnerable.”
Department of Justice lawyer Morgan Ratner supported the city’s position, arguing that this case was “fundamentally different from other Fourth Amendment cases” because it didn’t involve potential criminality.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor said it was dangerous to allow the police “to search and seize without standards.”
This is a developing story. It will be updated.