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This page contains Supreme Court rulings -- with summaries of the majority and minority conclusions.
99-1030
on Oct 3, 2000
Indianapolis operates vehicle checkpoints on its roads in an effort to interdict unlawful drugs. Mr. Edmond was stopped at such a checkpoint, and filed suit, claiming that the roadblocks violated the Fourth Amendment’s rule that a search or seizure is unreasonable absent individualized suspicion of wrongdoing. Held: (O’Connor, joined by Kennedy, Souter, Ginsburg, Breyer, & Stevens)
We previously held that brief, suspicionless seizures at highway checkpoints for the purposes of combating drunk driving and intercepting illegal immigrants were constitutional. We now consider [applying that to] illegal narcotics. Because the checkpoint program’s primary purpose is indistinguishable from the general interest in crime control, the checkpoints violate the Fourth Amendment.Dissent:(Rehnquist, joined by Scalia & Thomas)
The State’s use of a drug-sniffing dog, according to the Court’s holding,
annuls what is otherwise plainly constitutional under our Fourth Amendment jurisprudence: brief, standardized, discretionless, roadblock seizures of automobiles, seizures which effectively serve a weighty state interest with only minimal intrusion on the privacy of their occupants. Because these seizures serve the State’s accepted and significant interests of preventing drunken driving and checking for driver’s licenses and vehicle registrations, and because there is nothing in the record to indicate that the addition of the dog sniff lengthens these otherwise legitimate seizures, I dissent.Additional dissent: (Thomas)
I am not convinced [the original drunk-driving & immigration roadblock cases] were correctly decided. I rather doubt that the Framers would have considered “reasonable” a program of indiscriminate stops of individuals not suspected of wrongdoing. But Mr. Edmond did not advocate the overruling [of the original cases, so I join in the dissent].
Participating counts on VoteMatch question 19.
- Topic: Drugs
- Headline: No roadblocks with drug-sniffing dogs
(Score: -1)
- Headline 2: Roadblocks with drug-sniffing dogs are OK
(Score: 2)
- Headline 3: Treat drug roadblocks the same as drunk-driving roadblocks
(Score: 1)
- Key for participation codes:
- Sponsorships: p=sponsored; o=co-sponsored; s=signed
- Memberships: c=chair; m=member; e=endorsed; f=profiled; s=scored
- Resolutions: i=introduced; w=wrote; a=adopted
- Cases: w=wrote; j=joined; d=dissented; c=concurred
Democrats
participating in 99-1030 |
Republicans
participating in 99-1030 |
Total recorded by OnTheIssues:
Democrats:
0
Republicans:
0
Independents:
9 |
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