Opinion ID: 6351771
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Privacy-Based Approach

Text: Lewis fares no better under the privacy-based approach. Justice Harlan’s formulation of that approach asks (1) whether “a person [has] exhibited an actual (subjective) expectation of privacy,” and (2) whether “the expectation [is] one that society is prepared to recognize as ‘reasonable.’” No. 21-1614 13 Katz, 389 U.S. at 361 (Harlan, J., concurring). Even assuming that Lewis had a subjective expectation of privacy, the Supreme Court’s decisions in Caballes and Place demonstrate that his expectation was not reasonable. In Place, the Court explained that exposing luggage to a drug-sniffing dog in an airport was not a search, in large part because “the sniff discloses only the presence or absence of narcotics, a contraband item.” 462 U.S. at 707. Unlike an officer “rummaging through the contents of the luggage,” a dog sniff “does not require opening the luggage” and “does not expose noncontraband items that otherwise would remain hidden from public view.” Id. Similarly, in Caballes, the Court reasoned that “any interest in possessing contraband cannot be deemed legitimate, and thus, governmental conduct that only reveals the possession of contraband compromises no legitimate privacy interest.” Caballes, 543 U.S. at 408 (internal quotation marks omitted). Caballes also distinguished Kyllo, which involved a thermal-imaging device “capable of detecting lawful activity,” including “intimate details in a home.” Id. at 409–10. “The legitimate expectation that information about perfectly lawful activity will remain private is categorically distinguishable from respondent’s hopes or expectations concerning the nondetection of contraband in the trunk of his car.” Id. at 410. This is not to say that Lewis had no reasonable expectation of privacy whatsoever inside his hotel room. Lewis is correct that the Fourth Amendment extends to temporary dwelling places, such as hotel and motel rooms. Finsel v. Cruppenink, 326 F.3d 903, 907 (7th Cir. 2003) (citing Stoner v. California, 376 U.S. 483, 490 (1964)). A hotel guest has a reasonable expectation, for example, that there is not a hidden camera in her 14 No. 21-1614 room. But that does not mean an expectation of privacy that is reasonable in a home (i.e., to be free of warrantless dog sniffs) is necessarily reasonable in a hotel room. In that respect, the exterior hallway of a hotel adjacent to a parking lot is much closer to the public settings in Caballes and Place than the front porch in Jardines. Lewis was also a mere guest, not a resident. While it is true that hotel guests have some legitimate expectations of privacy, they cannot exclude others from entering a hallway— particularly where, as here, an exterior hallway is accessible from a staircase leading directly to the parking lot. Indeed, the Supreme Court in Stoner recognized that “when a person engages a hotel room he undoubtedly gives implied or express permission to such persons as maids, janitors or repairmen to enter his room in the performance of their duties.” Stoner, 376 U.S. at 489 (internal quotation marks omitted). If hotel guests have only a limited right to exclude hotel staff from a room, then it is hard to see how guests at the Red Roof Inn could reasonably expect to be free of dog sniffs in the exterior hallway.