Source: http://www.chanrobles.com/usa/us_supremecourt/476/227/case.php
Timestamp: 2020-01-28 23:08:55
Document Index: 304305951

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 114', '§ 1304', '§ 91', '§ 114', '§ 7414', '§ 114', '§ 7414', '§ 7413']

US Supreme Court Decisions - On-Line> Volume 476 > DOW CHEMICAL CO. V. UNITED STATES, 476 U. S. 227 (1986)
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2. The use of aerial observation and photography is within EPA's statutory authority. When Congress invests an agency such as EPA with enforcement and investigatory authority, it is not necessary to identify explicitly every technique that may be used in the course of executing the statutory mission. Although § 114(a) of the Clean Air Act, which provides for EPA's right of entry to premises for inspection purposes, chanrobles.com-red
BURGER, C.J.,delivered the opinion of the Court, in which WHITE, REHNQUIST, STEVENS, and O'CONNOR, JJ., joined, and in Part III of which BRENNAN, MARSHALL, BLACKMUN, and POWELL, JJ., joined. POWELL, J., filed an opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part, in which BRENNAN, MARSHALL, and BLACKMUN, JJ., joined, post, p. 476 U. S. 240. chanrobles.com-red
In early 1978, enforcement officials of EPA, with Dow's consent, made an on-site inspection of two powerplants in this complex. A subsequent EPA request for a second inspection, however, was denied, and EPA did not thereafter seek an administrative search warrant. Instead, EPA employed a commercial aerial photographer, using a standard floor-mounted, precision aerial mapping camera, to take photographs of the facility from altitudes of 12,000, 3,000, and 1,200 feet. At all times, the aircraft was lawfully within navigable airspace. See 49 U.S.C.App. § 1304; 14 CFR § 91. 79 (1985). chanrobles.com-red
The Court of Appeals reversed. 749 F.2d 307 (CA6 1984). It recognized that Dow indeed had a subjective expectation of privacy in certain areas from ground-level intrusions, but the court was not persuaded that Dow had a subjective expectation of being free from aerial surveillance, since Dow had taken no precautions against such observation, in contrast to its elaborate ground-level precautions. Id. at 313. The court rejected the argument that it was not feasible to shield any of the critical parts of the exposed plant areas from aerial surveys. Id. at 312-313. The Court of Appeals, chanrobles.com-red
Id. at 313. Viewing Dow's facility to be more like the "open field" in Oliver v. United States, 466 U. S. 170 (1984), than a home or an office, it held that the common law curtilage doctrine did not apply to a large industrial complex of closed buildings connected by pipes, conduits, and other exposed manufacturing equipment. 749 F.2d 313-314. The Court of Appeals looked to "the peculiarly strong concepts of intimacy, personal autonomy and privacy associated with the home" as the basis for the curtilage protection. Id. at 314. The court did not view the use of sophisticated photographic equipment by EPA as controlling.
The photographs at issue in this case are essentially like those commonly used in mapmaking. Any person with an airplane and an aerial camera could readily duplicate them. In common with much else, the technology of photography has changed in this century. These developments have enhanced industrial processes, and indeed all areas of life; they have also enhanced law enforcement techniques. Whether they may be employed by competitors to penetrate trade secrets is not a question presented in this case. Governments do not generally seek to appropriate trade secrets of the private chanrobles.com-red
Dow claims first that EPA has no authority to use aerial photography to implement its statutory authority for "site inspection" under § 114(a) of the Clean Air Act, 42 U.S.C. § 7414(a); [Footnote 1] second, Dow claims EPA's use of aerial photography chanrobles.com-red
Under § 114(a)(2), the Clean Air Act provides that "upon presentation of . . . credentials," EPA has a "right of entry to, upon, or through any premises." 42 U.S.C. § 7414(a)(2)(A). Dow argues this limited grant of authority to enter does not chanrobles.com-red
In California v. Ciraolo, ante p. 476 U. S. 207, decided today, we hold that naked-eye aerial observation from an altitude of chanrobles.com-red
The Court of Appeals held that whatever the limits of an "industrial curtilage" barring ground-level intrusions into Dow's private areas, the open areas exposed here were more analogous to "open fields" than to a curtilage for purposes of aerial observation. 749 F.2d 312-314. In Oliver, the Court described the curtilage of a dwelling as "the area to which extends the intimate activity associated with the sanctity of a man's home and the privacies of life.'" 466 U.S. at 466 U. S. 180 (quoting Boyd v. United States, 116 U. S. 616, 116 U. S. 630 (1886)). See California v. Ciraolo, supra. The intimate activities associated with family privacy and the home and its curtilage simply do not reach the outdoor areas or spaces between structures and buildings of a manufacturing plant.
Admittedly, Dow's enclosed plant complex, like the area in Oliver, does not fall precisely within the "open fields" doctrine. The area at issue here can perhaps be seen as falling somewhere between "open fields" and curtilage, but lacking some of the critical characteristics of both. [Footnote 3] Dow's inner chanrobles.com-red
It may well be, as the Government concedes, that surveillance of private property by using highly sophisticated surveillance equipment not generally available to the public, such as satellite technology, might be constitutionally proscribed absent a warrant. But the photographs here are not so revealing of intimate details as to raise constitutional concerns. Although they undoubtedly give EPA more detailed information than naked-eye views, they remain limited to an outline of the facility's buildings and equipment. The mere fact that human vision is enhanced somewhat, at least to the degree here, does not give rise to constitutional problems. [Footnote 5] chanrobles.com-red
Since the 1890's, petitioner Dow Chemical Company (Dow) has been manufacturing chemicals at a facility in Midland, Michigan. Its complex covers 2,000 acres, and contains a number of chemical process plants. Many of these are "open-air" plants, with reactor equipment, loading and storage facilities, transfer lines, and motors located in the open areas between buildings. Dow claims that the technology used in these plants constitutes confidential business information, and that the design and configuration of the equipment located there reveal details of Dow's secret manufacturing processes. [Footnote 2/1] chanrobles.com-red
Dow's security program also includes procedures designed to protect the facility from aerial photography. Dow has instructed its employees that it is "concerned when other than commercial passenger flights pass over the plant property." App. 14. When "suspicious" overflights occur, such as where a plane makes several passes over the facility, employees try to obtain the plane's identification number and description. chanrobles.com-red
Using a sophisticated aerial mapping camera, [Footnote 2/4] this firm took approximately 75 color photographs of various parts of chanrobles.com-red
Several weeks later, Dow learned about the EPA-authorized overflight from an independent source. Dow filed this lawsuit, alleging that the aerial photography was an unreasonable search under the Fourth Amendment and constituted an inspection technique outside the scope of EPA's authority under the Clean Air Act, 42 U.S.C. §§ 7413, 7414. [Footnote 2/6] The District Court upheld Dow's position on both issues, and entered a permanent injunction restraining EPA from conducting future aerial surveillance and photography of the Midland facility. The Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit reversed. 749 F.2d 307 (1984). It concluded that, while Dow had a reasonable expectation of privacy with respect to chanrobles.com-red
Ante at 476 U. S. 239. [Footnote 2/8] The Court does not explicitly reject application of the reasonable expectation of privacy standard of Katz v. United States, 389 U. S. 347 (1967), in this context; nor does it explain how its result squares with Katz and its progeny. Instead, the Court relies on questionable assertions concerning the manner of the surveillance, and on its conclusion that the Midland facility more closely resembles an "open field" than it does the "curtilage" of a private home. The Court's decision marks a drastic reduction in the Fourth Amendment protections previously afforded to private commercial premises under our decisions. Along with California v. Ciraolo, ante p. 476 U. S. 207, also decided today, the decision may signal a significant retreat from the rationale of prior Fourth Amendment decisions. chanrobles.com-red
Since our decision in Katz v. United States, the question whether particular governmental conduct constitutes a chanrobles.com-red
This statement simply repudiates Katz. The reasonable expectation of privacy standard was designed to ensure that the Fourth Amendment continues to protect privacy in an era when official surveillance can be accomplished without any physical penetration of or proximity to the area under inspection. Writing for the Court in Katz, Justice Stewart explained that Fourth Amendment protections would mean little in our modern world if the reach of the Amendment "turn[ed] upon the presence or absence of a physical intrusion into any given enclosure." 389 U.S. at 389 U. S. 353. Thus, the Court's observation that the aerial photography was not accompanied by a physical trespass is irrelevant to the analysis chanrobles.com-red
As discussed above, our cases holding that Fourth Amendment protections extend to business property have expressly relied on our society's historical understanding that owners chanrobles.com-red
In this case, the Court does not claim that Dow's expectation of privacy is unreasonable because members of the public fly in airplanes. Whatever the merits of this position in California v. Ciraolo, ante p. 476 U. S. 207, it is inapplicable here, for it is not the case that "[a]ny member of the public flying in this airspace who cared to glance down" could have obtained the information captured by the aerial photography of Dow's facility. California v. Ciraolo, ante at 476 U. S. 213. As the District Court expressly found, the camera used to photograph the facility "saw a great deal more than the human eye could chanrobles.com-red
Nor does the open field doctrine have a role to play in this case. Open fields, as we held in Oliver, are places in which people do not enjoy reasonable expectations of privacy, and therefore are open to warrantless inspections from ground chanrobles.com-red
The other basis for the Court's judgment -- assorted observations concerning the technology used to photograph Dow's plant -- is even less convincing. The Court notes that EPA did not use "some unique sensory device that, for example, could penetrate the walls of buildings and record conversations." Ante at 476 U. S. 238. Nor did EPA use "satellite technology" or another type of "equipment not generally available to the public." Ibid. Instead, as the Court states, the surveillance was accomplished by using "a conventional, albeit precise, commercial camera commonly used in mapmaking." Ibid. These observations shed no light on the antecedent question whether Dow had a reasonable expectation of privacy. Katz measures Fourth Amendment rights by reference to the privacy interests that a free society recognizes as reasonable, not by reference to the method of surveillance used in the particular case. If the Court's observations were to become the basis of a new Fourth Amendment standard that would replace the rule in Katz, privacy rights would be seriously at risk as technological advances become generally disseminated and available in our society. [Footnote 2/13] chanrobles.com-red
The Court of Appeals' holding rested in part on its erroneous observation that Dow had taken no steps to protect its privacy from aerial intrusions. See 749 F.2d 312-313. Moreover, the court apparently assumed that Dow would have to build some kind of barrier against aerial observation in order to have an actual expectation of privacy from aerial surveillance. Ibid. The court did not explain the basis for this assumption or discuss why it disagreed with the District Court's conclusion that commercial overflights posed virtually no risk to Dow's privacy interests.
The Court disregards the fact that photographs taken by the sophisticated camera used in this case can be significantly enlarged without loss of acuity. As explained in 476 U. S. 4, supra, the technique used in taking these pictures facilitates stereoscopic examination, which provides the viewer of the photographs with depth perception. Moreover, if the photographs were taken on transparent slides, they could be projected on a large screen. These possibilities illustrate the intrusive nature of aerial surveillance ignored by the Court today. The only Fourth Amendment limitation on such surveillance under today's decision apparently is based on the means of surveillance. The Court holds that Dow had no reasonable expectation of privacy from surveillance accomplished by means of a $22,000 mapping camera, but that it does have a reasonable expectation of privacy from satellite surveillance and photography. This type of distinction is heretofore wholly unknown in Fourth Amendment jurisprudence.