Rakas v. Illinois
Rakas v. Illinois, 439 U.S. 128 (1978), was a decision by the United States Supreme Court, in which the Court held that the "legitimately on the property" requirement of "Jones v. United States", for challenging the legality of a police search, was too broad. The majority opinion by then-Associate Justice Rehnquist held that a defendant needs to show a "legitimate" expectation of privacy in the place searched in order to be eligible to challenge the search. For example, an overnight guest in a friend's apartment has such "standing". In the case at issue, the Court  ruled that vehicular passengers in a car they did not own had no such legitimate expectation. Subsequent History. In "Rawlings v. Kentucky" (1980), the Court ruled that the test enunciated in Rakas—whether the petitioner had a reasonable expectation of privacy in the area searched—is the exclusive test for determining whether a defendant has standing to challenge a search.