mr chief justice and may have please the court the th amendment recognizes the sanctity of the home by drawing a firm line at the door the government cannot cross that line without a warrant unless there is consent directed in circumstances here there was neither respondents warrantless seizure of petitioner from his home and their subsequent seizures of his lawfully possess guns from his bedroom and garage violated the th amendment the st circuit tried to get around the warrant requirement by a new exception based on katie but katie involved a standardized search of a car in police custody it doesn't grant the license for intruding the home quite the opposite nearly every page of the court's decision relies on the constitutional differences between cars and houses responding to the united states take a different tack they claim that the war requirement isn't even implicated when officers act for not an investigatory reason but in case after case the court has consistently applied the war requirement to homes regardless of the government purpose including when public health or safety is at stake moreover the line between investigatory and non investigatory action is hardly clear nearly every criminal violation ha public safety implications so the spending with the war requirement whenever police can point to a health or safety motive would have destroyed the th amendment finally there is no good reason to create the sweeping new rule that responded to ask for where there is a true emergency or where people ask to be helped existing law already allows an exception to the warrant requirement many states also provide a number of ways for the government to address problems while respecting the th amendment including red flag was an involuntary commitment procedures but absent consent or i didn't circumstances the th amendment doesn't allow officers to conduct searches or seizures in the home pursue it only to their own discretion i'd be happy to answer the  horowitz let's say the police scanner call it seems o'clock at night the person says they're you know elderly neighbor they invited her to dinner at six it's eight o'clock she's never late for anything she's not answering the phone i haven't seen her leave the house they're worried they asked the police if they could come over and check it out the police do that thing go on to the property and they can't see much through the windows but the back door is open they go in situation you have to analyze whether the police had an objective basis for believing that there was an emergency there well i'm not in analyze i've given you all the facts do they have an objective basis because the neighbors says she hasn't they haven't days she didn't come over for dinner or she's never late is that enough you know i think that that alone would not be enough i think you would need some additional fact to suggest that there was a true emergency and that there was no other alternative for the police but to go in there are other things they did that can be done in that situation you can call another family member perhaps well i mean come on let us assume they think their family members are no answering the phone eyes or you know the neighbors are saying she's an elderly woman it's she's never late she's late they're not able to reach her by phone they don't know who else to call the police or violating the constitution because they walk in the back door to make sure you know she's not lying on lying on the floor i think absent abyssinian or consent or some objective we reasonable indication of an emergency which i don't think those fact establish the police can't just go into somebody's house without a watch that that is the basic command of the th amendment ok it's twenty four hours later can i go in then i think i think that there is a line drawing question of when and if how many facts you have to add to that hypothetical until it becomes an emergency i think twenty four hours would not be not at a certain point perhaps they could get a warrant for a missing person and going on that way on that basis but i think just the fact that somebody for twenty four hours might choose not to show up to dinner or choose not to answer the phone well that's not the only facts there are more facts which is that she was supposed to come over to dinner and the trees never late that the neighbors haven't been able to reach or none of that matters she just you know maybe she dies with the difference between eight o'clock at night and eight o'clock  next day i think it is all you have is twenty four hours that wouldn't be enough i think if you had you know maybe if you had those back was a couple more days perhaps that would be enough but i think  alternately it comes down to whether the police have an objective basis to think that there is an emergency that requires them to go in absentia is that they need to know right well that she doesn't matter if we're talking about a caretaking community caretaking what the community is like i mean is it could it be that somebody like andy of mayberry is all right because people expect him to you know keep track of things but you know kojak isn't i don't think that police would have a different license to enter the home without a warrant based based on those sorts of considerations no your honor justice thomas thank you mr chief justice and so are you going to return to command of the th amendment is and this court has recognized in the numerous cases is that warrantless intrusions of the home or on reasonable absent consent arrives in circumstances now if a wellness check were justified based exit in circumstances in light of in light of all of the facts and circumstances presented then the th amendment in that circumstance would allow it but absent that this is the th amendment say what are the words in the th amendment be violated this this court has interpreted the requirement of an unreasonable search and seizure to mean that a search of the home is unreasonable absent a warrant  from i think that the police officers are allowed to come on to the porch for a wellness check and all they're doing is knocking on the door to check on you i think they can't go farther than that if they don't have consent to enter the home and go inside temple simply going on to the porch and knocking on the door whether it's to check on you to check on a wellness or whether it is to collect for a charity i don't think that prohibited by the th amendment to the point of the chief question is if you get the elderly woman doesn't show she could be sick she could be actually she could be watching t v she could be doing any number of things but the you know maybe we agree that you shouldn't the police officers shouldn't peer through the windows  in search of contraband or something that looks like a search with the see if she is ok how does that become a search looking for someone to and violate in that instance the right of the people to be secure in their homes now again they cannot be does go in and the fines are conscious on the floor and she  if he goes in and it turns out that there was an actual emergency yes i mean well i mean he wouldn't know on the web so he enters the premises he doesn't have any knowledge of that for he goes in because exactly is it she said the neighbors invited her to dinner she's never late and he finds that she has actually fallen and broken or just the time as well while it's not a hindsight inquiry i think if those were the facts i think if he goes in without an objective basis and just happens to have guessed correctly that she did need help that would not absolve the officer of liability but i do think that if the officer has an objective basis beforehand for going in that would be emergency that would be emergency aid and in that situation there would be no force and that violation if you justice prior to the factual question in a legal question my factual question is this the  police went to the porch and they went and saw his and they took your client and took him to the hospital i think and then they went back and got the guns how long after they put him in the ambulance or wherever they put him how long afterwards and they got the gun they just described just prior i don't i can't tell you exactly how many minutes or seconds it was but it was all part of the same visit but it was the same visit it was all part of the same visit all part of the same visit i mean is thirty minutes too long is five minutes too short to have any idea i think it would be less than five minutes i think they had been five minutes outta i thank you and as a nd question is a legal question which i'm having a hard time with sure i think you could apply exits and circumstances and i think wait a minute there's so many situations where it's obvious the police should have her you know baby's been crying for five hours and nobody seems to be around or rats come out of the house at a time when rats carry serious disease and have to be stuffed a person goes into the house and the police think but they think the police believe inside the house and don't know that this person has a serious communicable disease particularly for older people who happen to live in the house i mean we all can think of dozens of instances and if we call those eggs in circumstances we weaken the eggs in circumstances and if we move to a whole new thing like caretaker i don't know what we do so what's your answer to my dog i'm a legally say existent circumstances but river there are special ones or what how do we do it justice but i think the way this court is understood exit in circumstances is as requiring a true c we can think of lots of circumstances where it's a very reasonable for a policeman to go into the house like that and you can too we both can so am i just as opposed to movie exiting circumstances rules which grew try reading the plague dr reading something where our rat coming out of the house could get people who bought a plague i mean you know it's easy to invent hypotheticals or do we just take this case on a common law basis make no rule and say this is too much or too little this court has always applied it which is requiring a true emergency and if there isn't a true emergency there may be other alternatives that the police can quickly take advantage of like administrative warrants that's what the court contemplated in the camera case involving housing code issues one is whether a wireless needed under certain circumstances i know that's what you want to talk about i want to put that aside and talk about a an issue that comes before that and that is what are the permissible we zoom for a search or seizure and of a mound of evidence that a government officer has to have to to conduct a search or seizure and so what i'd like to do is to try to give you some situations and ask you to tell us as briefly as you possibly can whether a search would be permitted under these circumstances and the amount of information that would be needed for a nonconsensual search five some government officer also putting aside  question of whether it's a police officer or somebody else so the st one is a person in the house may commit suicide where suicide is not a crime is that a permissible reason for a search for for by an officer without any other authorization just in the officer's discretion without can just out without consent no that's not a permissible reason for a search even if the officer has probable cause to believe a person will reason to enter that that may be a reason to enter does the officer need probable cause reasonable suspicion or something else i think the officer needs to have an objective basis to believe that the suicide is going to be immediate and that therefore the officer must enter in or as our enemy here see goes to the wire requirement probable cause reasonable suspicion or something else  i think that why i think they are related because i think for the warrant requirement you're asking something similar to a probable cause kind of inquiry which is is there a reasonable basis to believe that is ther child maybe abuse or do not necessary care permissible reason probable cause reasonable suspicion something else i think you would need probable cause in that situation but that's a criminal situation and so you could get a criminal warrant there you need to be able to get a criminal one in it from the hypothetical as i understood it that was a that would be criminal abuse of an elderly individual and out of the  r spoke to her she said something was wrong and she's upset but it was hartmann so severe and now when i call the caretaker always provide sixteen excuses why she can't my mother can't speak on the phone to think that any judge would not consider the hypothetical press spy the chief justice as justifying a set a not an entry by police officers  you have a neighbor who is expect some elderly woman to come visit a known who comes and tells the police she's never late and it's now she's really late emergency aid doctrine in the exigent circumstance doctoring would permit most entries that when there is reasonable cause to believe that someone might be in need would also cover a lot of other situations that the other side is positing today require a community care taking exception to the emergency a doctor can cover is true emergencies if there is reasonable cause to believe that someone is  that doesn't help the respondent in this case they haven't argued added in circumstances in fact they've affirmatively waived that that inserted the i don't disagree with you and i think that you could always posit an argument in the middle and then officers would have qualify an immunity but my point to you is aren't you trying to break you're right that the community care taking exception was created because of some of these hypotheticals but i think at the core and i thought that was your argument is that there has to be some sense of them and then see some sense that there's a real problem going on correct diversity you mentioned a bit ago the possibility of administrative warrants and i'd like to explore that on a bit suppose suppose a locality suppose you were to win this case and the locality said you know we wan set up a good scheme of giving permission for the kinds of welfare checks that we've been doing what would that scheme look like and how far away would it be from what we think of as the kind of scheme that produces criminal warrants jeff is going to go i think it would depend on what the state is trying to accomplish with the welfare check scheme but that to say the two sorts of schemes that have proliferated proliferate in states are red flag laws and involuntary commitment laws and there are red flag was in many states that allow warrants where guns were taking guns from people is necessary because they pose a risk of harm to themselves or others and those cause standard isn't something lower could it be something lower it to usually a probable cause standard and they were was typically provide some specific criteria for a court to consider about whether the i think the fact that it goes through a rd party is that key barrier to that scheme i think that is that a significant factor under the th amendment i think it would be more defensible under the th amendment if it required probable cause i don't i don't know depending on the details of the scheme whether some slightly lesser standard would be sufficient but probable cause by a judge would i think be the gold standard of such a scheme for th amendment purposes and and i'm less interested in the gold standard than the dividing constitutionally you could broaden those laws to encompass like the chief justice's hypothetical i think it could i think state can provide for a warrant for a welfare check as long as there a an objective basis for believing that there's a person in side in need and in that situation it might not have to be a true emergency because it's not a police officer making that judgment in his or her discretion on their own but rather you have a neutral decision maker i'm not aware of state having done that but i think they probably could as long as you had again an objective basis found by a judge by neutral decision making and in the states that have done this what neutral decision was potentially suicidal was a statement that he made the night before but twelve hours have passed since that statement he was in the home with the gun during that time nothing had happened and the officer said that when they spoke with mr chameleon he seemed calm and normal and polite those circumstances don't make out an emergency that requires immediate action without involving a mental health professional a neutral decision maker and so forth rather than just the officer's discretion thank you justice course of the morning counsel morning pick up where justice kagan left off do we need to or should we decide whether exit in circumstances or a community care taking exception applies to these facts or do you want to just resolve the legal question and remand to the st circuit we're asking you to we're not asking you to resolve them we don't think it would be appropriate for you to resolve whether exit in circumstances applies to those facts because of the waiver as far as community care taking concerned we're asking you to hold as a legal matter that the community care taking doctrine doesn't justify searches or seizures from the home and because that is the only basis that the respondent have given for the searches or seizures here  there would be no remit and required that that would be a judgment in our favor at that point ok and your friends on the other side solicitor general's office are using the th amendment permits war the seizure or home entry that is reasonably necessary to protect health or safety that's their test what's wrong with that for starters got his course edge that's contravene by a number of this court cases including cameron clifford and bar lows and tell where even though there was a public safety rationale offered for the search the court nevertheless required an administrative warrant before fit government officials could search from the home so it contrary to this court case law is also a rule that would swallow all sorts of other th amendment doctrines because virtually any criminal situation can also be described in health or safety terms you wouldn't need the hot pursuit exception  warrant to enter the home in order to arrest somebody because the police could in that circumstance say well it would be dangerous for the other occupants of the home to have to have a killer in the home with them for any situation involving drugs and alcohol police could just say they were going into the home in order to make sure that the suspect was ok that would be contrary to this court's decision in welsh and so the government's rule here is contrary to lots of this court's precedent and would create an exception that swallows rules that are essential to the th amendment ok accepting that that might be the case council and that pretty much everything can be described as health or safety right i mean what but what does a government do that doesn't involve health or safety how does it help to have  administrative warrant requirement i mean i understand the common law requires treating the home as an asylum and castle of defense that was virtually impenetrable absent some sort of immediate concern about physical injuries as you describe in your brief but if the government can just get an administrative warrant to come in to test for illness to check at the temperature of the house whether it's too hot to neutral decision maker rather than and i understand that but the neutral decision makers also employed by the government and then the different branch maybe maybe not and state governments can organize themselves how they wish so maybe an executive officer permitting another executive officer showing of what you said reasonable suspicion that the house might be too warm to cold is as a really a reasonable search or seizure in light of the th amendment history in original me if you had one executive officer providing authorization for another i think that would be problematic if you had a truly neutral decision maker like a judge and then having that decision maker and evolve to prevent arbitrary harassment by officers getting the occupant of the home some notice are older people who fall and suicide so i want to focus on those two things the chief justice questions focused on the older people who fall on the statistics on the and are quite shocking and some churn you that are huge and many of us of course will when there is a neighbor you haven't seen or parents who lives in a different  place will instead of barging into the house yourself more calling a parent lives in a different place calling a neighbor to barge into the outbreak in a house you'll call the local police officer who you might have a relationship with particularly in smaller towns and communities and ask them to check in one can you do that consistent with the th amendment i think you could always call the police and i know when you can call one can the police go so your answer the chief justice was somewhat startling but i think the police can go in when they have reasonable cause to believe that there is someone in need ok i must let's break that down you haven't seen the person on a few hours are you always talk to your parent in florida on sunday night and they weren't there so on monday you call the police what happens i think laugh in that situation the police  depending on how many back you give them about this you know your parent generally being reliable and not missing a call not missing appointment that the more facts of that sort that you add to the hypothetical i think that the more likely it is that the police could quite plausibly invoke emergency aid as a basis for going in to make sure that the person is ok but you would need to know the police would need to have that objective basis to think that it really somebody in need that would let them to spend well it's not going to be perfect information it's going to be a neighbor who cares about another neighbor and hasn't seen them or a parent and what i'm worried about is obviously the longer you're in the house and no one comes to you you're more likely to die from the fall and that's what you know the statistics are huge on older people dying from false yet again i've never going to be perfect information and that's why it simply requires an objective basis not a certainty and to an objective basis in the moment and i think in the five suicides by gunshot in the united states on average every day ok and police officers are critical and when a neighbor want to family member as in this instance can help prevent that and so it and twelve hours had passed since the statement that he had made now whether or not somebody in that situation might benefit from help that that not and  in the moment don't have the time to do all this they're faced with a spouse they're really reacting to a situation and you know what if they say you know what that's not enough and then the person commits suicide you know that's not a good result and that's what your position unfortunately the starkest form your position well leadoff assertion backing away from going into houses when old people of fallen or there's concern about that or when there's a risk of suicide in a situation like this the officers could have involved a mental health professional and if they were unable to devise time to time is of the essence i i have a question you know you're talking about finding a neutral decision maker in here and you know you cite the line in your brief about police being engaged in the often competitive enterprise of ferreting out crime what if you know and some communities are doing that because sometimes mental health checks don't go so well and people end up getting hurt or the police after someone who's mentally ill pulls a gun on the police or a knife things go very poorly and sometimes the person who is the subject of the welfare check winds up being hurt or killed so some some communities are creating a situation where social workers go in would that be reasonable do you need to have an administrative scheme or an administrative warrant or something like that what if it's not the police who go in but it's a community that has a system where you call a social worker if there's going to be a welfare check and the social worker goes in in the kind of situation just as cavanagh is describing  worker would be better equipped than a police officer to determine if there's a real emergency and if the social worker shows up on the scene and decides in his or her professional judgment that i had to go in i think that would that would go a long way toward showing that there were e and circumstances and the police can decide if their existence circumstances and that's covered by a precedent i guess i'm asking you is whether it affects the reasonableness calculus if you have the kind of neutral person that you be appropriately involved in an administrative warrant scheme if that kind of person shows up and says yes there's an old person who's been in there and rather than having the police go in the social workers going to go in to check on the elderly parent in florida who hasn't been heard from in circumstances so i think that likely would satisfy the th amendment but the framework that i would use the think about that is that the social worker is making a determination  circumstances so you're so i think the answer to my question and you're you're answering my question by saying no the same standard would apply to social workers and that's fine that's consistent but you're saying as existence circumstances or nothing no matter which government officials making that judgment  i think that's right i think if the social worker were simply going in based on the judgment that there is no way to get in circumstances but this person could benefit from help no i don't think that's a determination that the government can make consistent with the th amendment ok let me ask you about the kinds of administrative schemes that you're imagining it sounds odd to my ears to talk about probable cause to think that someone would benefit from help right we use the probable cause requirement to talk about probable cause to believe that a crime has been committed are there circumstances where probable cause or reason opposition reasonable suspicion those sorts of standards have been used outside of the investigative context when we're talking about crime there are and that is what this court called for in the camera case and i get red flag was an involuntary commitment was which i mentioned earlier an example where the probable cause standard is applied it's also been applied in other contexts like housing code violations and the like so that that that what has been called by lation sound different to me you know you have probable cause to believe that there's been some sort of violation even if it's not criminal it sounds odd to me to apply that probable cause standard to the kinds of situations that the chief justice or justice cavanagh were positing where you have an elderly person who needs help there's there's no violation but i think the way that the court that states have adapted the probable cause standard and i think it's consistent with camera is that probable cause means an objective basis to believe that fill in the blank that somebody ought to have guns removed from them that they pose a risk of harm to themselves and so forth ok thank you i managed to wrap up counsel thank you mr chief justice in the th amendment protects the home in a special way when it comes to the home a reasonable search requires a warrant unless there is consent or a true emergency a number of the court's questions this morning and focused on the practical consequences of that but but as some of the question suggested the exit in circumstances doctrine and that and consent will cover the vast majority of situations that one might be concerned about where police can point to an objective basis to think that there is a need to go in they can do so where somebody asks for help they can do so and in some of the other scenarios states have come up with and can continue to come up with administrative warrant type regimes that meet the needs that the respondents and the united states are positing in this case but the problem with the rule of the other side is positing is that it would allow people to go into up into the home police officers to go into the home without a warrant in situations that would essentially blow up numerous other th amendment doctrines that this court has held are very important to protect the sanctity of the home thank you counsel mr desis the officers reasonably acted weighing the intrusions against the risk and the timing of the are in this case the absolute position taken by titian or not a lot of care dating actions may have resulted in death or injury more significant than that and you know the backyard surrounded by a lot fences is intitled to protection as well you know a mere cat caught in a tree i mean you leave it there for a while it'll probably come down on its own posits that there is a warrant requirement and we normally say that the th amendment standard when it comes to the home requirement so the th amendment or math with a warrant to time when it comes to the home but he says th though that's an exception to the general requirement for a warrant and i'm trying to figure out how you got from this case to the general case to the case that he said if you take a caretaker exception and read that into the word reasonable there's no stopping we don't know how far will go but if you are absolute you may cause a different problem so we're looking for a subsidiary standards camera says you need a warrant for administrative searches but it uses words like normally and so forth so there's some wiggle room there what about what you would what would you think of the standard that rhode island wrote into its law that you'd write we'd write a case that has to do with suicide threat period the american psychological association says you must take those threats seriously so that two are writing about a common law approach to this case rhode island says any police officer as i wrote this statute after this case began an police officer can take an individual into protective custody and so forth if the officer has reason to believe he is in need of immediate care and treatment and there be a risk of serious harm by reason of mental disability if he is allowed  liberty what about that if the officer has reason to believe that there is an imminent likelihood of serious harm by reason of mental disability and suppose we said well for one ok now what do you think of simply saying rhode island here has written a standard that is reasonable as applied to this case and then i read  down to preventing a life threatening injury or serious injury or some definable quantity of property damage you think it's possible to give us some structure in any of those ways i do i think the most important obviously the most important goal is preventing injury to line with that or destruction major destruction of property i i don't think the test is any different because i think when you weigh the interests involved against the privacy rights things like climbing up a tree to get a cat out for a lot  very little time what about the amount of information the government officer has to have probable cause reasonable suspicion something else i think i think it has to be objective le they seem all to have different factors that make up community caretaking and i'm actually not sure what it means but i am concerned deeply about the st of circuits claim that there is no requirement that officers must select the lease intrusive means so fulfilling care community care taking responsibilities i think what everyone has forgotten here is that at least in this situation there was no immediate danger to the person threatening suicide and no immediate danger to the wife because the suicide person was removed to a hospital and so the issue is can the police not with standing pat and now withstanding the ability to ask the wife whether she would consent  sitting up the gun and ammunition that they decided on their own to go in and seize the gun that appears to me to take away from any of the limiting principles that justice alito put forth yes some say some whether you call it reasonable suspicion some some suspicion whatever you put there there was no immediate danger there were a readily accessible alternative that was ignored and you're putting into the hands of law enforcement the ability to use their judgment as opposed to that of the psychiatry is who were treating this man they certainly could have asked the psychiatry is whether they should remove the guns or not it into anything  tell me what's the limiting principles how how much how serious a threat have to be how much should turn to the police officers have to be how do we limit them from substituting their own could they have gone into the house and take it not just the done but any pat knife anything else that in their judgment this man could have used to commit suicide  police have some good reason to think that a person is going to use a gun or other weapon to take his own life or to take it to take his own life or to take the life of a spouse or other family member that would count as  enough for the police to proceed in other words it is an exigent circumstances or you can say it falls within the exception that we've set up for emergency aid so why didn't you make that argument we  or i'm sorry could you just explain that to me a little bit and you just thought that it wasn't it didn't it was not an immediate threat and why did you think that we thought that the timing of th phrase that covers a lot of stuff but as justice thomas says we really only use that phrase with respect to automobile inventories inventory searches and you said well the th amendment has only one test but reasonable this requirement what it means and people could of course trespass on property in a public or private necessity but we did a call it was in circumstances i'm unable to locate any and that is you're not address class and if you're going in for purposes of helping someone or helping ok if the if the original meaning in history doesn't help let me ask you why i'm kind of following up on justice kagan real quickly here i would have thought that cases of threatened violence against oneself or others or the prospect that someone is lying or having fallen the home would count as eggs in circumstances in the vast majority of cases and it's only when there is a long time delay that that's going to become a problem so why why why doesn't the  question does make this seem as i think the amicus brief from the states written by the utah solicitor general says that this case is before the corner as the brief says quote partly because of confusion and told justice corsets that your best example a common law something like this was that for the torrent of trespass if you entered property because of necessity there was no liability and is it really the case that say i'm a neighbor and i go into mr home because you know i understand the wife is concerned about the presence of the gun still in the house and i take the guns and take them back to my house that i'm not liable either for  have to justify the seizure as well and you don't have an example for that common law my right forever ok let me ask you this what if they what if the police went into mr communions home and they found a mass lab i assume that they can take all of that and he can be prosecuted here yes ok and then let's talk about how far the succession might go because obviously there's a lot of concern about it being an umbrella for a lot of sorts of lots of different things let's say that in a town with a high rate of covert infection police look through the window and they can see a lot of people gathered together that are not wearing masks and they enter yes but see i think that there  these non investigatory situation from welfare checks on elderly residents to intervention and current suicide threat although there have been a lot of questions this morning about whether this is some urgency aid or exigent circumstances or community care taking or something else the label you give it is not nearly as important as the principle and the key principle is if someone has at risk of serious harm and it's reasonable for officials to intervene now that is enough the officials don't need to show the harm in mere moments away or that there is no time to get a warrant because again for many of these situations there is no warrant process that could be invoked at all government interest so no no concern about property or for animals i think there would have to be unusually compelling circumstances for those other types of interest to questions and may want to leave that question open but we think the most important cases for the court to cover here are the protection of a risk to human health and so there are cases where there is water dripping from above over an electrical box and someone who does not want the government to help or doesn't want to be intrusion normally when we look at these things under the th amendment we do look for  as you saw that he could enter a home without a warrant to break up a fight to stop late night noise to deal with disorderly drinking and that was different from when he was acting in his law enforcement capacity so that  i do think it's the best analog that you have here and i know that petitioner has been identified single case or treated at common law in which a non and fast again tory entry don't know that someone is going to be injured in mere moments and we are perfectly fine with that test and we think that test would cover circumstances like welfare checks and the current it with side threat the problem is when you have low government simply taking this case is a common law case it does involve threats of suicide they are serious saying the rhode island legislature has this is a rhode island case has enacted subsequently a statute that we believe has a constitutional standard that allows the officers to take the individual into protective custody if the officer has reason to believe that there is a risk of imminent likelihood of serious harm by reason of mental disability justifier out we would be fine with that result if the court clarifies what it means by me what is it that we should suck how do you define the word imminent often judge i know less about this than psychologists and psychiatrists who say that any other its allure and threatening suicide should be taken very seriously i'm not an expert but i would think lawyers should take it seriously what do you want to say i think if he said it by human input we have meant to suggest a current ongoing crisis from which it is reasonable to act now and you founded that description by reasonableness rather than by a mere moments rule or by comparison to a warrant process that doesn't even officials and to others which which i do think is an important part of this case that petitioners asking for a warrant process to applied to things that firefighters do and social workers do and mental health professionals do  you have that statement coupled with the production of a live firearm a statement that so scared that individual who presumably knows that person best that she packed a bag in the magazine for the gun left for the night and called the police the next morning and then you have confirmation by the person who made the statement that he did that he was sick of the fight and so on and so on and so i do think courts are perfectly capable of drawing the line between those two  that's the language of the th amendment and it seems to me that i don't have a problem with them having removed this gentleman and taken him to the hospital that's a seizure because they had reason to believe that he was threatening suicide and even though twelve hours had passed the wife was still concerned and he admitted to the thread in our bed calling it a joke i don't think police officers have to take his description at face value given the circumstances described so seizing him and taking him to the home would seem to me to fit into a psychiatric examination is very much an accident circumstance missing here as i've pointed out to your colleague is the next step which is going into the home without six attempt to secure consent from the wife and seizing the gun and then keeping it indefinitely until a lawsuit is filed the wife try to get it back he try to get it back weeks and weeks went by when we permit its police to search and seize without some standard we run the risk of situations like this one repeating themselves so can you concentrate on the exigency with respect to the nd seizure at issue as my colleague seemed concerned with the st one preventing the suicide which has to do with seizing the individual or even going in to care for the individual i'm talking about a nd seizure now and try and run that wasn't a seizure take that part out of the cave and then the question was you know should we be off there is have brought followed petitioner into the hospital and made sure that he got a mental health evaluation or did they think taking a gun where they knew the location of  following this person to the hospital and  is rendered can i ask you about a few of the community care cases in the lower courts and ask what you think of them roehrig st there's a lot of noise coming from one house the officer knocks nobody comes to the door the neighbors are complaining but there doesn't it's not it doesn't rise to the level of a crime in the office or go in as i mentioned before we aren't defending the basement of nuisances cave like that one did i'm just asking i mean  is is really the core they could match ok how about the officer there goes to the home i think that the officer is trying to leave a child protective order or something like that but what the officer  you pause at all that the community care exception has acquired this these dimensions in the lower court in the lower courts to encompass all of these cases i don't know justice kennedy i think because you acceptable to children with no adult in the home and risk of explosion and they're just much more obvious circumstances where there's no one available and of course we want someone to intervene  radnor let me see if i understand what what you said the small because it differs a little bit from my reading of your brief you agree we should look to the common law to inform understanding the th amendment recently passed away as we've always agreed that the court that looks to the common law for you will see government officials are allowed to enter homes in the service of their peacekeeping duties ok but you're asking us to rely on as i understand it maybe i'm mistaken the comma laws general rule that  necessary to prevent harm so i wouldn't want to put that sort of the need to see cast and again ok but i thought i thought i thought you said it had to do with physical harm to persons of the common law actually extends both  accident circumstances that i think tripped up the lower cord is because it's often thought of as the time available to get a warrant the court has said ok what if in this jurisdiction for a criminal case someone can actually get a warrant within an interesting question as the original as the original meaning of the term reasonable and reasonable as distinct from the term search and seizure but put that aside we don't we certainly don't ignore the common law even as to the term reasonable so if we're writing an opinion here without warrants in order to address the need reasonable possibility of disturbance or serious fiscal harm that also maps onto the common law of trespass which applied of course beyond government officials and just to private individuals i would know that because that's still the common law rule under petitioners theory here is government officials would be allowed to enter the home and fewer circumstances than private individuals are permitted to enter where i think obviously there's no parallel between what government officials are permitted to do and what private individuals are permitted to do don't have to be clear about your argument you're saying that you would be then ok and the rules that we ar sided with you didn't include the ability to seize guns or other things found in the home no i wouldn't i would not be ok my point is merely if you're talking about the common law trespass rule that applied to individuals from that you can derive the general point which is an entry is justified when there is a serious harm at brest on the other hand government officials obviously are allowed to do things all the time that private individuals can do and so i certainly wouldn't limit government officials to the common law rules that apply to private individuals only so once you're in then you need a common law analog when sharon you seized the guns if you see drugs and that sort of thing of course in plain view applies if someone is acting in a reasonable way within the meaning of the th amendment and other things that law enforcement officers or other government officials are entitled to do even if the reason they mentor the house is to seize the guns yes i know that part of the test that we're talking about here and in terms of the scope is that we would expect what they do in the house to be reasonably tailored to the non investigat justification so if it's reasonable to temporarily take a hold of some gun and yes as long as what they do inside the home is tailored to that that's permissible again i would i would focus i would encourage the court not to focus too much on the guns of this case in part because petitioner doesn't even make an argument about the case specifically reasonableness here and in large part because a lot of the cases that are covered by these principals aren't going to involve firearms thank you drawn that distinction in assessing programatic searches like mandatory drug testing and inventory searches and in those cases the analysis starts by asking whether there's an objective purpose grounded in general on force man if there is provide st aid so applying a warrant requirement here would make little sense as a matter of fact history of logic and what matter is no matter the label is that  minutes for further questions or points you might like to make i think i'd like to and during that time my colleagues of course are free to d ask additional questions and i'd like to start by emergency aid well why should we be concerned that doing that will dilute the limits on those exceptions as opposed to having a more carefully defined shouldn't be going at the reason that the temporal limit on the exit in circumstances doctrine is so important is that it ensures that if they're claiming exit in circumstances doesn't just become a pretext for law enforcement and there are a couple of cases from oh i was sorry it's not so much it's a pretext for law enforcement but that it's a pretext for community care taking well i think either way the the risk is that officers go in and they say it's because they're looking out for somebody who's interest but not in an emergency situation and they end up even at a minimum invading the privacy of the home when the person might just want to be left alone or worse yet it might lead to a criminal prosecution pursuant to say claim that they were doing so because they thought the person inside might need help they found the person flipping on the sofa with a sawed off shotgun next to them and a person was criminally prosecuted and the th circuit in that case held that with a permissible use of community care take and what do you community caretaking or whether you call it a lease or version of act that in circumstances either way not having the carefully defined temporal limit on what constitutes an exit in circumstances is critical for protecting the interests that underl you know if you think about what the s g eight said today as opposed to some of the statements in the s g brief as i understood ms retton or she said well we don't care about the label and we can call it exigent circumstance the only thing we care about and she said it has to be a current ongoing crisis the only thing we care about is that no court should think it has to be in the end it has to be really immediate or in the space of time with which to get a warrant because after all a lot of places there's no place to get a warrant in in in circumstances like lease so what would be wrong with that i'm going to point in response to that one i think it's critical that the officers think of it they need to act it in in it and if if you know if you mowed that imminent requirement to the injury is either happening now or that it's about to happen i agree it doesn't need to be happening now and it doesn't need to be happening in a matter of seconds but it has to be happening and it has to be quite imminent i think it's important to impose that temporal limit to avoid the sorts of problems that i was describing the other point i'd like to make in response to that is the state have come up with numerous more and regimes that would apply in these types of situations there was one in rhode island in this very case where police and mr can ilya had refused to speak to a mental health professional rather than taking it upon themselves to send him to the hospital police could have gotten an order from a court that in their judgment there was an emergency that required sending him to the hospital in a court that authorized that and so there are these warrant regimes and in camera in fact there were not widespread administrative warrant regimes but the court contemplated that such a regime was necessary in order to protect the th amendment and states in the years since have come up with it so i do think that states have created these kinds of procedures  and that that is a significant part of the answer to the question here is having those i mean those sorts of alternatives counsel could you just just back up a moment i think you blew past a pretty quickly explain what what the problems are with diluting the imminence requirement so i think the problem with do losing the eminence requirement and in the cases i think illustrate this in if you don't ensure that circumstances are actually exits and policed will in an infinite array of situations be able to say well if we had some reason to believe that the person inside might need help and so if the take a case like welsh from this court case law where the police went to somebody's home per and had had committed drunk driving but it would not have pushed through and the person was not a risk to the public because he was already at home but the police nonetheless went into his house without a warrant and arrest it this court said that that violated the th amendment and under the other side view of the law presumably the police could say well we were very concerned that this person the interest that the th amendment counsel gives them so i'm not on the question of suicide how is an officer supposed to determine how immediate the person might commit suicide  figure that out i think it depends on what they see when they go to the home and to take this onus and i see nothing when they go to the home that you they have you know this person is suicidal in some facts that support that and they can get in the home just let them let it go and i think the st step would be to consult a mental health professional if they can't consult a mental health person so that takes a few hours in the meantime the suicides occur well st of all i think in many ways it wouldn't take a few hours it could be done much more quickly but if  they did find it they couldn't consult a mental health professional because they couldn't read one for a few hours and if they had a credible reason to believe based on whatever information or tape i mean if it the that is the way these formulas are graded but you know  officers have to make a split nd decision like they don't have time to figure this out by consulting mental health professional i've been told they've been told in the hypothetical that the person is suicidal it's not the drunk driving example it's not it's suicidal and you want them to hesitate and i really question that you know does it care about it if they have been told that the person is suicidal they cannot get in touch with the person they cannot get in touch with a mental health professional i think that if you actually could go in i think that would probably try to negativity you you wouldn't you would impose the mental health professional requirement in there i think it may be off your dad the officer can't just take those facts and and can't make a judgment trying to save a life i think that if they can do that in a matter of moments on the cell phone while driving through the house to check on the person they also call the metafile health professional i think they ought to do that seamless is just to sort through my hood that seems to me going too far all right let's be realistic this is like justice of the chief justice is question about the lady who doesn't come out of her home i do understand the difference between this the wellness check and what the common law permits you to do and the seizing of the guns from the home where the person is no longer there are suicide threats there's a big difference between the two why can't you see the difference why can't your rule articulate that difference in a more reasonable way  just to for my or i i think on the facts of this case the difference is that they were able to speak to mr kony earlier he answered the door he did not want to be held and they had no basis to think that there was any immediate harm that would have prevented them do think as your questions earlier suggested that the seizure of the gun is wholly indefensible be because they what they took an extra step of going into the home to seize the gun when there was no arguable imminent risk because these kinds of community care taking functions are not ones that officers perform at all at common law i think those the bottom line of our position here is that we're not saying that police officers can never enter we're just saying they need consent a warrant or an emergency exit in circumstances situation but the exit in circumstances situation ought to be defined with a tight temporal limit in order to ensure the interest protected by the th amendment the st target of course relied only on the community care taking exception as a sole basis for upholding the searches and seizures here because the community care taking exception doesn't extend to the home we asked that judgment your st thank you council for cases submitted