Opinion ID: 852714
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Heading: Constitutionality of Inspections Without Landlord Consent

Text: The landlords contend that section 156.05(E) of the City's Housing Code is unconstitutional because it fails to require a warrant if a landlord does not consent to an administrative search of the landlord's property. The City initially contends that the landlords have not been subjected to any search without consent, and therefore they have no standing to raise the claim that the ordinance is unlawful for lack of a warrant provision. The landlords respond that they are subjected to risk of penalties under this ordinance for refusing to comply with unconstitutional searches and therefore have standing. We think this argument presents a good example of the point that issues of standing and search and seizure under the Fourth Amendment merge into one: whether governmental officials violated any legitimate expectation of privacy held by petitioner. Rawlings v. Kentucky, 448 U.S. 98, 106, 100 S.Ct. 2556, 65 L.Ed.2d 633 (1980). If the ordinance under which the registration fees were assessed violates the Fourth Amendment on its face and the offending provision is not severable, then the ordinance is not enforceable and constitutes a defense to the City's collection claim. We therefore agree that the landlords have standing to raise this contention, but disagree that the claim has merit. The landlords cite decisions from several jurisdictions that have held or suggested that a housing code inspection provision is facially unconstitutional if it does not by its express language require inspectors to seek a warrant to conduct a nonconsensual search of the landlord's residential rental property. [6] Other jurisdictions have reached the opposite result. [7] The authorities finding constitutional flaws in housing ordinances calling for warrantless inspection all find their roots in Camara v. Municipal Court of City & County of San Francisco, 387 U.S. 523, 87 S.Ct. 1727, 18 L.Ed.2d 930 (1967). The Supreme Court there held that except in certain carefully defined classes of cases, a search of private property without proper consent is `unreasonable' unless it has been authorized by a valid search warrant. Id. at 528-29, 87 S.Ct. 1727. In Camara, a tenant-lessee was prosecuted for refusing to submit to a warrantless search of his rental unit by a housing code inspector. [8] The tenant's conviction was reversed because a warrantless search of the tenant's dwelling without consent of the tenant was held to violate the Fourth Amendment. Id. at 540, 87 S.Ct. 1727. In See v. City of Seattle, 387 U.S. 541, 545-46, 87 S.Ct. 1741, 18 L.Ed.2d 930 (1967), a companion case to Camara, the Supreme Court held that the Fourth Amendment also bars prosecution of an occupant of commercial property who refuses to permit a warrantless code-enforcement inspection. [9] For the reason given below, we do not believe either Camara or See supports the landlords' claim. First, as explained below, in many, if not most inspections, unlike the tenant, the landlord has no constitutional claim of any sort. Accordingly, the landlords' facial attack fails under the general doctrine that a statute or ordinance is not unconstitutional simply because it might be administered in an unconstitutional manner under some circumstances. Operation Badlaw, Inc. v. Licking County Gen. Health Dist. Bd. of Health, 866 F.Supp. 1059, 1065 (S.D.Ohio 1992) (A facially constitutional regulation does not become unconstitutional because it might be applied unconstitutionally.); Hometown Co-operative Apartments, 515 F.Supp. at 504 (plaintiff's speculation and conjecture as to future possibility that city would in bad faith refuse to seek a warrant or would be unable to procure one such that city would force a property owner or tenant to consent to a warrantless search was insufficient to invalidate an otherwise facially valid inspection ordinance); Tobe v. City of Santa Ana, 9 Cal.4th 1069, 40 Cal.Rptr.2d 402, 892 P.2d 1145, 1152 (1995) (To support a determination of facial unconstitutionality, voiding [a] statute as a whole, petitioners cannot prevail by suggesting that in some future hypothetical situation constitutional problems may possibly arise as to the particular application of the statute .... (emphasis in original)). In order for the landlords to establish a Fourth Amendment violation they must show that the governmental action unreasonably invades their legitimate privacy interest. See Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 361, 88 S.Ct. 507, 19 L.Ed.2d 576 (1967) (Harlan, J., concurring). The landlords' claim fails this threshold test. A legitimate expectation of privacy involves two components: 1) did the person exhibit an actual expectation of privacy; and 2) does society recognize that expectation as reasonable? Moran v. State, 644 N.E.2d 536, 540 (Ind.1994) (citing Katz, 389 U.S. at 361, 88 S.Ct. 507). Fourth Amendment rights are personal and may not be vicariously asserted. Rakas v. Illinois, 439 U.S. 128, 133-34, 99 S.Ct. 421, 58 L.Ed.2d 387 (1978). Accordingly, the tenants' well established right to be free of warrantless inspection does not confer any rights on the landlords. Both Camara and See addressed the Fourth Amendment rights of the occupant of leased property. The rental unit is the tenant's home, and the tenant clearly has an important interest in not having the inspector observe conditions and events wholly unconnected with building violations, but nevertheless embarrassing or intrusive to the tenant. 5 Wayne R. LaFave, Search and Seizure: A Treatise on the Fourth Amendment § 10.1(g) at 34 (West 2004) (quoting Comment, 65 Colum. L.Rev. 288, 292 (1965)). The tenant also has a legitimate interest in not having personal and family activities unnecessarily interrupted. LaFave, supra, § 10.1(g) at 34. For these reasons, as Camara held, a warrantless search without the tenant's consent is unconstitutional. See makes clear that occupants of commercial property also have cognizable Fourth Amendment interests: The businessman, like the occupant of a residence, has a constitutional right to go about his business free from unreasonable official entries upon his private commercial property. 387 U.S. at 543, 87 S.Ct. 1741. However, the status of residential and commercial tenants for these purposes is not identical. Occupants of commercial property have a lesser expectation of privacy in their property than that of individuals in their homes. See, e.g., New York v. Burger, 482 U.S. at 700, 107 S.Ct. 2636 (An expectation of privacy in commercial premises, however, is different from, and indeed less than, a similar expectation in an individual's home.); Donovan v. Dewey, 452 U.S. at 598-99, 101 S.Ct. 2534 (The greater latitude to conduct warrantless inspections of commercial property reflects the fact that the expectation of privacy that the owner of commercial property enjoys in such property differs significantly from the sanctity accorded an individual's home....). Landlords do not themselves occupy the rental units as either personal residences or as commercial space. Their interests are therefore substantially further down the scale of protected interests than either the residential or commercial tenant, and in most circumstances fall off the scale altogether. First, by leasing the property, the landlord has abandoned any expectation of privacy in the leased space and common areas because the tenant has full access to them. Second, to the extent there are areas in the premises that are not accessible by tenants, the only property ordinarily on the premises belonging to the landlord is the premises itself, which is the subject of legitimate governmental interest. The landlords cite their concern that if a violation of the Code is found during an investigation, they are subject to civil fines and argue that this exposure to penalties implicates their security interests. It is true that an inspection may reveal a violation but we disagree that this risk creates any Fourth Amendment claim. The discovery of a Code violation during the course of a housing code inspection compromises no legitimate privacy interest. As the Supreme Court of the United States recently held in upholding a dog sniff search for drugs, 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. Illinois v. Caballes, 543 U.S. 405, 125 S.Ct. 834, 837, 160 L.Ed.2d 842 (2005) (emphasis in original) (internal quotations omitted). Just as there is no right to possess contraband, the landlords have no right to operate residential rental units in violation of housing code standards. The expectation that certain facts will not come to the attention of authorities is not a privacy interest that society considers reasonable. Id. at 837-38, 125 S.Ct. 834. (internal quotations omitted). If the only thing a landlord has to fear from a housing code inspection is discovery of code violations, the landlord has no cognizable privacy interest in keeping violations hidden from authorities. To the extent that the landlord's privacy interest is implicated at all by the City's Housing Code, it is only where the landlord may occupy a unit or keep personal effects in an unoccupied area. The landlord may also occupy and control some service areas in a residential complex. Except in these limited situations, unlike the tenant, the landlord suffers no threat from a housing inspection of accidental or incidental invasion of privacy as to unrelated matters. Indeed, the landlords in this case do not claim that they have anything in the complex except the property itself, and do not claim to occupy any units. Where the landlord is also the occupant, either by living in a unit or keeping property on the premises, we would read the inspection provision of the Code to require a warrant if a landlord objects to an inspection. It is a familiar canon of statutory interpretation that statutes should be interpreted so as to avoid constitutional issues. Gomez v. United States, 490 U.S. 858, 864, 109 S.Ct. 2237, 104 L.Ed.2d 923 (1989); See also Tobin, 939 F.Supp. at 633-34 (holding that an inspection ordinance could be read as incorporating a warrant requirement into the inspection procedure so as to defeat the claim that the inspection ordinance was unconstitutional on its face). The Code requires inspectors to obtain the consent of a tenant to an inspection and requires a warrant in the event the tenant refuses consent. The Code also requires landlords to grant the inspector access to the building after the consent of the tenants is obtained. Thus, the Code assumes that units subject to inspection will be occupied by tenant-lessees, not landlord-owners. The drafters of the Code apparently did not explicitly consider the circumstance where the owner of an apartment unit is also an occupant of the rental premises either by making it his own home or by leaving property there. In either case, we would consider the landlord to be also the tenant and would apply the warrant procedure to the landlord itself. So construed, the ordinance is in conformity with the Fourth Amendment. Accordingly, we find no constitutional defect in the City's housing code. There is another flaw in the landlords' claim. Local legislation is not constitutionally infirm because it does not explicitly provide for all constitutional guarantees and rights that might be implicated by its terms. In a given case, background constitutional law dictates whether some protections will be required in the enforcement of a local law. See, e.g., United States v. Cernobyl, 255 F.3d 1215, 1219 (10th Cir.2001); United States v. Brough, 243 F.3d 1078, 1079 (7th Cir.2001) (penalty provision in federal drug statute was not facially unconstitutional merely because it was silent concerning who makes findings and which party bears the burden of persuasion to meet requirements of jury findings under Apprendi v. New Jersey, 530 U.S. 466, 120 S.Ct. 2348, 147 L.Ed.2d 435 (2000)); Coal. of N.J. Sportsmen v. Florio, 744 F.Supp. 602, 610 (D.N.J.1990) (a state gun control law need not contain an express acknowledgement of the supremacy of federal law and preemptive legislation to withstand a challenge brought under the supremacy clause). For the reasons already given, in most inspections no warrant is required due to tenant consent. If in a particular case, for example where the landlord occupies the premises, the federal or state constitution requires the City to seek a warrant to conduct an inspection without landlord consent, the City will need a warrant whether or not section 156.05(E) addresses that explicitly. But the ordinance is not invalid for failure to spell that out.