Opinion ID: 1473736
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Government Action

Text: As the United Supreme Court has recognized in countless decisions, the fundamental and overriding purpose of the Fourth Amendment `is to safeguard the privacy and security of individuals against arbitrary invasions by governmental officials.' New Jersey v. T.L.O., 469 U.S. 325, 335, 105 S.Ct. 733, 83 L.Ed.2d 720 (1985) (quoting Camara v. Municipal Court, 387 U.S. 523, 528, 87 S.Ct. 1727, 18 L.Ed.2d 930 (1967)). The Fourth Amendment is a constraint upon government only, however, and therefore does not apply to limit illegal searches by private individuals. See LaFave, supra, § 1.8, at 217. According to the majority, listers are not engaged in law enforcement activities, i.e., investigating regulatory violations or criminal wrongdoing, and thus are to be considered private persons immune from the constraints of the Fourth Amendment. That analysis does not hold up. The Supreme Court has long emphasized that the Fourth Amendment's strictures impose restraints, not only upon police, but also upon governmental action in general. T.L.O., 469 U.S. at 335, 105 S.Ct. 733. Thus, the Fourth Amendment is applicable to the activities of civil governmental authorities such as public school officials, id. at 333, 105 S.Ct. 733, building inspectors, Camara, 387 U.S. at 528, 87 S.Ct. 1727, health and safety inspectors, Marshall v. Barlow's, Inc., 436 U.S. 307, 312-13, 98 S.Ct. 1816, 56 L.Ed.2d 305 (1978), and firefighters, Michigan v. Tyler, 436 U.S. 499, 506, 98 S.Ct. 1942, 56 L.Ed.2d 486 (1978). The reasoning behind these decisions is simple: the fundamental interest to be protected  individual privacy  suffers irrespective of the source of the governmental intrusion. T.L.O., 469 U.S. at 335, 105 S.Ct. 733. As the Supreme Court has stated time and time again, it would be `anomalous to say that the individual and his private property are fully protected by the Fourth Amendment only when the individual is suspected of criminal behavior.' Id. (quoting Camara, 387 U.S. at 530, 87 S.Ct. 1727). The critical issue is not whether the government employee is acting in a law enforcement capacity investigating criminal wrongdoing, but rather whether the employee is on a government mission. Thus, the Fourth Amendment extends to administrative inspections, most of which are made in the course of periodic or area inspection programs, and not in response to specific complaints. LaFave, supra, § 10.1, at 368. As noted, the United States Supreme Court has rejected the notion that the privacy rights established in the Fourth Amendment depend upon whether the search was part of a criminal investigation that might lead to prosecution. Id. at 371-72, 105 S.Ct. 733 (in Camara, Supreme Court overruled earlier decision suggesting that Fourth Amendment was limited to searches stemming from criminal investigations that might lead to prosecution). It is a perversion of the exclusionary rule to conclude that the Fourth Amendment should protect most against the conviction of criminals. Id. at 377, 105 S.Ct. 733. The fundamental and overriding purpose of the Fourth Amendment is to protect individual privacy, and the individual's interest in privacy does not fluctuate with the intent of the intruding government officials. Id. at 377-78, 105 S.Ct. 733. In the past, a number of courts concluded, as the majority does today, that the activities of governmental employees carrying out of public functions which do not strictly speaking fall within the realm of law enforcement are not covered by the Fourth Amendment. LaFave, supra, § 1.8(d), at 253-54. But after the Supreme Court's decision in T.L.O., it is plain that these cases are wrongly decided. Id. at 254. Although the reasoning in T.L.O. leaves room for the argument, accepted in United States v. Attson [900 F.2d 1427 (9th Cir.1990)], that there are still some governmental employees whose activities do not constitute Fourth Amendment `searches and seizures,' id. at 255, neither Attson nor any of the other cases relied upon by the majority demonstrate that such a conclusion is warranted in this appeal. The cases relied upon by the majority stand principally for the proposition, not relevant here, that the Fourth Amendment does not constrain the activities of persons acting in an essentially private capacity merely because they happen to be government employees. In each of those cases, which are discussed below, the government employee was not on a government mission, but rather was acting in essentially a private capacity. In contrast, here it is undisputed that the town listers are government officials who were performing their governmental duties when they inspected defendants' home. Without question, their conduct had an investigatory or administrative purpose designed to elicit a benefit for the government, Attson, 900 F.2d at 1430, that is, to aid the municipal government in assessing property taxes, one of the most basic and powerful functions of government. [4] Their aim was plainly to benefit the Town of Walden and to protect taxpayers collectively by assuring that defendants were being assessed based upon the full value of their home. Unlike the government employees in the cases discussed below, the listers were not acting merely as private persons who happened to be government employees. Rather, they were inspecting property in their capacity as government agents. Thus, under the controlling precedent, their activities are subject to the Fourth Amendment, as well they should be. Attson, a Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals case upon which the majority relies heavily, does not support a contrary view. In that case, the defendant, who had been involved in an automobile accident, was taken to a hospital, where he consented to a blood sample for medical purposes only. Eventually, the hospital released the results of the sample pursuant to a grand jury subpoena, and the defendant was convicted of manslaughter. On appeal, the defendant unsuccessfully argued that the trial court erred by not suppressing the sample, which had been taken by a doctor employed by the federal government. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals noted that the Fourth Amendment regulated only conduct designed to elicit a benefit for the government in an investigatory or, more broadly, an administrative capacity and cannot be triggered simply because a person is acting on behalf of the government. Attson, 900 F.2d at 1429. Citing the trial court's finding that the doctor had taken a sample of the defendant's blood purely for medical reasons, the Ninth Circuit held that the doctor's mere status as a governmental employee was not enough to trigger application of the Fourth Amendment. Id. at 1433-34. Because the doctor was acting in the same capacity as any private physician and was not motivated by some sort of investigatory or administrative purpose designed to elicit a benefit for the government, id. at 1430, the Fourth Amendment did not apply. Of course, as noted above, the opposite is true in our case. Rather than acting as private persons, the listers were performing their official duties to benefit the Town of Walden. The other cases relied upon by the majority sound a similar theme. In State v. Ellingsworth, 966 P.2d 1220 (Utah Ct.App. 1998), a workers' compensation adjuster employed by a quasi-government corporation obtained and examined the defendant's medical records while reviewing her claim for benefits. Eventually, the defendant was prosecuted for insurance fraud after a workers' compensation investigator forwarded the defendant's case history to the attorney general's office pursuant to a statute requiring insurance agents to release information related to suspected fraud. The defendant argued that the use of her medical records in the criminal trial violated her Fourth Amendment rights. The appellate court rejected this argument, holding that the Fourth Amendment did not apply because the adjuster was acting like any other private insurer in reviewing the defendant's claim for benefits to protect its own interests unrelated to law enforcement. Id. at 1225. Similarly, in Commonwealth v. Cote, 15 Mass.App.Ct. 229, 444 N.E.2d 1282 (1983), a meter reader working for a municipally-owned, public-regulated utility was checking a gas meter in the basement of an apartment building when he noticed an illegal, unmetered gas hook-up, which he reported to police. At his larceny trial, the apartment owner argued that the evidence observed by the public utility employee should be suppressed. The court rejected this argument, ruling that neither mere employment by an arm of government nor the mere fact of State regulation implicates the Fourth Amendment. Id. at 1285-86. The court emphasized that the meter reader had a legal right to be on the premises pursuant to a statute that made no distinction between employees of publicly owned and privately owned utilities, and that furthered only the proprietary functions of utility companies without regard to their public or private ownership. Id. at 1286. Thus, as in Attson and Ellingsworth, the government employee was acting in essentially a private capacity and was not motivated by some sort of investigatory or administrative purpose designed to benefit the government. The same can be said of the government actor in People v. McKendrick, 188 Mich.App. 128, 468 N.W.2d 903 (1991). That case concerned a city ordinance that gave the city the right to enter upon any unfenced private property to cut down overgrown weeds, as long as advanced warnings and notices were given. When the defendant failed to respond to the notices, grass cutters hired by the city entered the defendant's property to cut down overgrown weeds. Once there, the grass cutters discovered marijuana plants and informed police. The court rejected the defendant's argument that the Fourth Amendment applied, concluding that there was no state action because the grass cutters were not on the property to aid the municipality for any investigative purposes. Id. at 911. State v. Smith, 243 Kan. 715, 763 P.2d 632 (1988), cited by LaFave, supra, § 1.8(d), at 258-59, is another case in which the Fourth Amendment was not applied to private conduct engaged in by a government employee. There, a state park employee was performing trash removal duties when he heard a hissing sound and entered a cabin to determine its source. He found a leaking hose and turned off the water, but in the process noticed several bags of marijuana. He notified police, and the lessees of the cabin were prosecuted. At trial, in response to defendants' motion to suppress, the court determined that the Fourth Amendment did not apply because the park employee's actions were tantamount to those of a private citizen with no different status than that of an employee of an independent privately owned trash service. Id. at 637-38 (park employee was acting as good neighbor and not for any purpose connected with his employment). After reviewing the relevant United States Supreme Court case law, the court in Smith found one common thread in those cases: In every case [in which the Supreme Court has held the Fourth Amendment to be applicable], the search has been conducted or sought by government officials or agents as a part of their regular duties of employment and were conducted within the scope of that employment. No case has been cited by counsel, and our research has found none, in which the sole basis for invoking the Fourth Amendment protections was the mere fact that the person who discovered the incriminating evidence happened to be a government employee as opposed to a private citizen. In every case the search or proposed search has furthered the government's objectives as they relate to the duties of the government employee. Id. at 637. Plainly, under this analysis, the listers' actions in the instant case are subject to the Fourth Amendment's constraints on government action. In short, the cases relied upon by the majority do not support its analysis. The majority purports to be [f]ollowing the decisions from other states, but cites no cases to support its specific holding that the listers' inspection was not a search under the Fourth Amendment. In fact, the only case directly on point  State v. Vonhof, 51 Wash.App. 33, 751 P.2d 1221 (1988)  explicitly rejects the position taken by the majority. There, a tax appraiser working for the county entered the defendants' property, uninvited, to measure the dimensions of a new porch addition. Upon approaching an outbuilding, he smelled marijuana, left the premises, and contacted police. Like the majority in the instant case, the trial court concluded that the visit by the tax appraiser was not a search under the Fourth Amendment because the appraiser was not acting with law enforcement authority. The appellate court rejected this reasoning, ruling that the tax appraiser was acting as a government official, and not as a private citizen, and that it was not essential that he have law enforcement authority. Id. at 1224. [5] The court concluded, however, that there was no unconstitutional search because a statute expressly authorized the tax appraiser to examine property at any reasonable time, [6] and, under the factors enumerated in a prior decision, the search was not unreasonable. Id. at 1224-25. Thus, Vonhof provides no support for the majority's view that the Fourth Amendment does not apply to listers inspecting private property.