Opinion ID: 901177
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Matters of Unique State Tradition or Concern

Text: [¶ 52.] South Dakota retains a distinctly individual character, evident in its diverse communities, its amalgam of cultures, its mixture of heritages, and its contrasting terrain. Matters unique to South Dakota may generate a reason to view a particular constitutional provision differently. It should be the rare case, however, that this factor alone would cause us to reach a conclusion divergent from federal interpretation of a similarly worded constitutional provision. South Dakota is unique in many respects, but on issues of search and seizure, for example, we are not so different from most other states. Although not based primarily on a constitutional provision, our decision in Parks v. Cooper exhibits the type of deeply rooted regional issue  preservation of precious water resources through the public trust doctrine  that a court might take into account in examining a disputed provision of our constitution. 2004 SD 27, 676 N.W.2d 823. [¶ 53.] In reference to the question of trash searches, [e]xpectations of privacy are established by general social norms, and thus, we must ask how local norms in South Dakota differ from the rest of the country. See Robbins v. California, 453 U.S. 420, 428, 101 S.Ct. 2841, 2847, 69 L.Ed.2d 744 (1981) (exemplifying the dissimilar decisions throughout the country due to the refusal of later court opinions to follow its rationale). The Fourth Amendment was created to address government abuses perceived or actually experienced by the framers. Is a similar abuse occurring in South Dakota? The defendants do not make that assertion. In this case, the police were not searching residential garbage as a general crime control measure; they had a specific reason to examine the defendants' trash. Although a few courts have found an expectation of privacy in curbside trash, a majority of state courts have found to the contrary. Do we have a culture or tradition in common with the minority of jurisdictions favoring a privacy interest in discarded trash? [¶ 54.] In the end, this factor should be invoked cautiously. First, we can presume that in most instances the Legislature would enact laws dealing with matters of deep concern in South Dakota. Indeed, it could regulate trash searches if public distress about privacy reached a high level of concern. Second, this criterion has a high potential for misuse. What we may personally conceive as a matter of state tradition or concern may well be borne from our own strident viewpoint. We must remain mindful of Justice Frankfurter's admonition that we are not justified in writing [our] private notions of policy into the Constitution, no matter how deeply [we] may cherish them or how mischievous [we] may deem their disregard. West Virginia State Bd. of Ed. v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624, 647, 63 S.Ct. 1178, 1189, 87 L.Ed. 1628 (1943) (Frankfurter, J., dissenting).