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Page Number: 22.0

18 

MISSOURI v. MCNEELY 

Opinion of the Court 
Opinion of SOTOMAYOR, J. 

terrible  toll  on  our  society.    See  NHTSA,  Traffic  Safety 
Facts, 2011 Data 1 (No. 811700, Dec. 2012) (reporting that
9,878  people  were  killed  in  alcohol-impaired  driving 
crashes  in  2011,  an  average  of  one  fatality  every  53
minutes).

But the general importance of the government’s interest 
in  this  area  does  not  justify  departing  from  the  warrant
requirement  without  showing  exigent  circumstances  that
make securing a warrant impractical in a particular case. 
To  the  extent  that  the  State  and  its  amici  contend  that 
applying  the  traditional  Fourth  Amendment  totality-of­
the-circumstances  analysis  to  determine  whether  an  exi­
gency  justified  a  warrantless  search  will  undermine  the 
governmental  interest  in  preventing  and  prosecuting 
drunk-driving offenses, we are not convinced. 

As an initial matter, States have a broad range of legal 
tools  to  enforce  their  drunk-driving  laws  and  to  secure
BAC  evidence  without  undertaking  warrantless  noncon­
sensual  blood  draws.    For  example,  all  50  States  have
adopted implied consent laws that require motorists, as a
condition of operating a motor vehicle within the State, to 
consent  to  BAC  testing  if  they  are  arrested  or  otherwise 
detained  on  suspicion  of  a  drunk-driving  offense.    See 
NHTSA  Review  173;  supra,  at  2  (describing  Missouri’s 
implied consent law).  Such laws impose significant conse­
quences when a motorist withdraws consent; typically the 
motorist’s  driver’s  license  is  immediately  suspended  or 
revoked,  and  most  States  allow  the  motorist’s  refusal  to 
take  a  BAC  test  to  be  used  as  evidence  against  him  in  a
subsequent  criminal  prosecution.    See  NHTSA  Review 
173–175;  see  also  South  Dakota  v.  Neville,  459  U. S.  553, 
554,  563–564  (1983)  (holding  that  the  use  of  such  an  ad­
verse  inference  does  not  violate  the  Fifth  Amendment 
right against self-incrimination).

It  is  also  notable  that  a  majority  of  States  either  place
significant restrictions on when police officers may obtain