Opinion ID: 783790
Heading Depth: 5
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Effect of Edmond and Ferguson

Text: 30 In City of Indianapolis v. Edmond, 531 U.S. 32, 121 S.Ct. 447, 148 L.Ed.2d 333 (2000), the Court considered a Fourth Amendment challenge to an Indianapolis highway checkpoint program that authorized suspicionless searches for the discovery and interdiction of illegal narcotics. Rejecting the contention that the Indianapolis program fell within the limited circumstances in which the usual rule [of the Fourth Amendment] does not apply, 531 U.S. at 37, 121 S.Ct. 447, the Court stated that: 31 [T]he gravity of the threat alone cannot be dispositive of questions concerning what means law enforcement officers may employ to pursue a given purpose. Rather, in determining whether individualized suspicion is required, we must consider the nature of the interests threatened and their connection to the particular law enforcement practices at issue. We are particularly reluctant to recognize exceptions to the general rule of individualized suspicion where governmental authorities primarily pursue their general crime control ends. 32 Id. at 42-43, 121 S.Ct. 447 (emphasis added). The Court also explained that Mich. Dep't of State Police v. Sitz, 496 U.S. 444, 110 S.Ct. 2481, 110 L.Ed.2d 412 (1990), in which it upheld a state's use of highway sobriety checkpoints, did not stand for the proposition that law enforcement needs could render legitimate a program of suspicionless searches. Id. at 39, 110 S.Ct. 2481. Rather, Edmond made it plain that the checkpoint program at issue in Sitz was designed to reduce the immediate hazard posed by the presence of drunk drivers on the highways. Id. The Court in Edmond then cautioned that it had never approved [a general program of suspicionless seizures] whose primary purpose was to detect evidence of ordinary criminal wrongdoing.  Id. at 41, 121 S.Ct. 447 (emphasis added). 33 Thus, in Edmond, the Court refused to permit a `general interest in crime control' as justification for a regime of suspicionless stops. Id. (quoting Delaware v. Prouse, 440 U.S. 648, 659, 99 S.Ct. 1391, 59 L.Ed.2d 660 (1979)). Allowing use of the special needs doctrine in cases in which the justification for the search was the general interest in crime control would do little to prevent such intrusions from becoming a routine part of American life. Id. at 42, 121 S.Ct. 447. Where law enforcement authorities pursue primarily general crime control purposes, the Court cautioned, searches and seizures can only be justified by some quantum of individualized suspicion. Id. at 47, 121 S.Ct. 447. 34 The Supreme Court reaffirmed its Edmond holding a year later in Ferguson v. City of Charleston, 532 U.S. 67, 121 S.Ct. 1281, 149 L.Ed.2d 205 (2001). In that case, petitioners challenged a state hospital program that tested pregnant women for drug use and then made available to the police the results of these tests if a woman tested positive twice. 532 U.S. at 72, 121 S.Ct. 1281. The Court held that while a significant goal of the program was to aid women with drug abuse problems, the immediate objective of the [suspicionless] searches was to generate evidence for law enforcement purposes,  id. at 83, 121 S.Ct. 1281 (emphasis in original), and, accordingly, tests conducted for purposes of the program violated the Fourth Amendment. Prosecutors and police were heavily involved in both the program's conception and implementation. Id. at 88, 121 S.Ct. 1281. As the Court emphasized, [i]n none of our previous special needs cases have we upheld the collection of evidence for criminal law enforcement purposes.... [T]he extensive entanglement of law enforcement cannot be justified by reference to legitimate needs. Id. at 84 n. 20, 121 S.Ct. 1281. Justice Kennedy, concurring in the judgment, agreed that the 35 special needs cases we have decided do not sustain the active use of law enforcement, including arrest and prosecutions, as an integral part of a program which seeks to achieve legitimate, civil objectives. The traditional warrant and probable-cause requirements are waived in our previous cases on the explicit assumption that the evidence obtained in the search is not intended to be used for law enforcement purposes. 36 Id. at 88, 121 S.Ct. 1281 (Kennedy, J., concurring in the judgment). 37 Thus, both Ferguson and Edmond reaffirm that the special needs doctrine applies to a narrow category of cases to which traditional Fourth Amendment requirements are inapplicable. In those two decisions, the Supreme Court made explicit its underlying premise that special needs cases qualify for an exception to the Fourth Amendment's customary requirements only because they involve programs or activities not designed to serve the ordinary needs of law enforcement. Von Raab, 489 U.S. at 679, 109 S.Ct. 1384; see also Earls, 536 U.S. at 833, 122 S.Ct. 2559 (noting that the [urine] test results are not turned over to any law enforcement authority); Vernonia, 515 U.S. at 658, 115 S.Ct. 2386 (stating that the results of the tests are disclosed only to a limited class of school personnel who have a need to know; and they are not turned over to law enforcement authorities or used for any internal disciplinary function); Skinner, 489 U.S. at 620-621, 109 S.Ct. 1402 (noting that toxicological tests intended to prevent accidents, not to assist in the prosecution of employees); Von Raab, 489 U.S. at 666, 109 S.Ct. 1384 (Test results may not be used in a criminal prosecution of the employee without the employee's consent.). Forcing a parolee like Kincade to submit to blood extraction against his will, and without any constitutionally cognizable level of suspicion for the law enforcement purpose here involved, is not analogous to testing, for example, persons who voluntarily participate in a highly regulated endeavor, such as students who engage in organized sports or extracurricular activities, Earls, 536 U.S. at 830-31, 122 S.Ct. 2559, or federal Customs employees who seek promotion to certain sensitive positions, Von Raab, 489 U.S. at 671, 109 S.Ct. 1384. See also Vernonia, 515 U.S. at 657, 115 S.Ct. 2386 (By choosing to `go out for the team,' [these students] voluntarily subject themselves to a degree of regulation even higher than that imposed on students generally. (emphasis added)). 38 The government's primary response to Edmond and Ferguson is to argue that Rise v. Oregon, 59 F.3d 1556 (9th Cir.1995), resolves the case before us. In Rise, we held that a state DNA collection statute, similar in implementation to the one we consider here, comported with Fourth Amendment reasonableness. Although a panel of this court cannot ordinarily overrule Ninth Circuit precedent, United States v. Gay, 967 F.2d 322, 327 (9th Cir.1992), we nevertheless in appropriate circumstances may, indeed must, reconsider past cases in light of an intervening decision of the Supreme Court that undermines that earlier precedent. [T]he issues decided by the higher court need not be identical in order to be controlling. Rather, the relevant court of last resort must have undercut the theory or reasoning underlying the prior circuit precedent in such a way that the cases are clearly irreconcilable. Miller v. Gammie, 335 F.3d 889, 900 (9th Cir.2003) (en banc). At that point, a three-judge panel should consider itself bound by the later and controlling authority, and should reject the prior circuit opinion as having been effectively overruled. Id. at 893. See also Galbraith v. County of Santa Clara, 307 F.3d 1119, 1123 (9th Cir.2002); United States v. Lancellotti, 761 F.2d 1363, 1366 (9th Cir.1985); Spinelli v. Gaughan, 12 F.3d 853, 855 n. 1 (9th Cir.1993). 39 Rise relied on an interpretation of Supreme Court precedent that has since been wholly discredited by Edmond, 531 U.S. at 44, 121 S.Ct. 447, and further undermined by Ferguson, 532 U.S. at 84, 121 S.Ct. 1281; Rise and Edmond/Ferguson are clearly irreconcilable. Rise rejected a Fourth Amendment challenge to a state DNA collection statute; we stated at the outset, citing Sitz, that [e]ven in the law enforcement context, suspicionless searches could be conducted if the intrusion was minimal and was justified by law enforcement purposes. 59 F.3d at 1559. Indeed, Rise was premised on the understanding that the searches it endorsed were law enforcement searches conducted for the primary purpose of controlling crime; we assumed that Sitz also involved such searches, and followed what we believed to be Sitz 's example, concluding that searches for law enforcement purposes could proceed even absent individualized suspicion. As we have explained, however, Edmond expressly repudiated this interpretation of Sitz. The Court stated that the suspicionless searches in Sitz were justified because they were searches to prevent an immediate threat to highway safety by removing drunk drivers from the road, not searches to further a general purpose of investigating crime. Edmond, 531 U.S. at 39, 121 S.Ct. 447. Furthermore, Edmond — and then Ferguson — made clear that the Court would decline to suspend the usual requirement of individualized suspicion where the police seek to employ a [search] primarily for the ordinary enterprise of investigating crimes. Id. at 44, 121 S.Ct. 447. Rise, however, did precisely that. It approved suspicionless searches designed to further law enforcement objectives. Because Rise depended on reasoning and reached a result that the Supreme Court has since expressly disavowed, its precedential effect has been dissipated by the Supreme Court's intervening ruling[s], and thus, in deciding Kincade's challenge to searches pursuant to the Act, we do not apply it. Grunwald v. San Bernardino City Unified Sch. Dist., 994 F.2d 1370, 1375 n. 4 (9th Cir.1993). In fact, were we to follow Rise, we would be acting in disregard of controlling Supreme Court doctrine. 25 40 The government suggests, however, that Edmond and Ferguson do not apply to searches pursuant to the Act, because both Supreme Court cases dealt with programs affecting law abiding citizens, while the Act addresses probationers and felons. In neither case did the Court suggest that its exclusion of law enforcement purposes from the special needs context applies only in the case of law-abiding persons. Rather, these two decisions stand for the proposition that a program of suspicionless searches, conducted for law enforcement purposes, violates the Fourth Amendment, whether the person searched is a model citizen (and thus the search will produce no useful evidence), or whether he is not law-abiding (and as a result evidence of a crime may sometimes be obtained). Indeed, it would be a unique construction of the Constitution to hold that Fourth Amendment protections exist only for the benefit of the innocent, and not for all persons in our society, regardless of one's propensity to engage in criminal activity. 41