Court Opinion

ID: 9481958
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 08:36:15.897985+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:48:40.648371
License: Public Domain

*903WIGGINS, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
I agree with the majority that Montes had no legitimate expectation of privacy in the residence or the backyard. I also agree that he did have a legitimate expectation of privacy in the vehicles and, therefore, that he has standing to contest the officers’ conduct regarding them. I disagree that lifting the vehicle cover to observe the VIN was an unreasonable search in the circumstances in this case, and so I dissent.
Because of the extensive regulation of automobiles and the importance of the VIN to that system of regulation,1 the Supreme Court has held that there is “no reasonable expectation of privacy in the VIN.” New York v. Class, 475 U.S. 106, 114, 106 S.Ct. 960, 966, 89 L.Ed.2d 81 (1986). Further, purposefully or inadvertently obscuring the VIN from ordinary view to someone outside the vehicle does not create a privacy interest in the VIN. Id. Nevertheless, the Court recognized in Class that vehicle owners do have some expectation of privacy in the interior of their vehicles, where the VIN is usually located, although that interest is not as weighty as the interest in the privacy of one’s home, for example. See id. at 112-13, 106 S.Ct. at 965.
In Class, a police officer had reached into the interior of a car that had been stopped for traffic violations to remove some papers on the dashboard that covered the VIN. In considering whether the invasion was reasonable, the Court discussed the officers’ safety, the minimal nature of the intrusion, the fact that the officers had observed the driver commit two traffic violations, and the driver’s lack of a privacy interest in the VIN. The Court held that given all these considerations, the officer’s intrusion into the interior of the car, without the owner’s consent, to move the obscuring papers was reasonable and did not violate the Fourth Amendment. Id. at 116-19, 106 S.Ct. at 967-69.
Following the example of Class, we should balance all the concerns at issue in this case in deciding whether Officer Gor-man’s actions were reasonable under the Fourth Amendment. Officer Gorman was confronted with something out of the ordinary — two covered vehicles with Mexican license plates located in a backyard. Although these facts certainly do not amount to probable cause that a crime has been committed, I believe they do justify minimally intrusive efforts by a police officer to observe the VIN. The fact that these were parked vehicles in a backyard, not vehicles being driven on the open road, as in Class, does not render inapplicable the regulations that preclude an owner’s privacy interest in the VIN. An important purpose of these regulations, and of the VIN — to establish ownership — has nothing to do with whether the vehicle is being driven on the public roads or not. Consequently, I would hold that, like the dashboard papers in Class, the placement of a cover over a parked vehicle is insufficient to create a privacy interest in the VIN.
As placing a cover over a vehicle does not create a privacy interest in the VIN, neither does it negate the owner’s privacy interest in the interior of the vehicle. The intrusion, lifting the cover, must be reasonable. However, lifting a vehicle cover in order to observe the VIN from the outside is not significantly more intrusive than reaching into the interior of a vehicle, as was approved in Class. Considering all the circumstances of this case, covered vehicles with Mexican license plates parked in a backyard, the minimal intrusion of lifting a vehicle cover to observe the VIN, and Montes’ lack of a privacy interest in the VIN as a general matter, I would hold that Officer Gorman’s action in lifting the cover was reasonable and did not violate the Fourth Amendment.
I recognize that my holding would allow an officer to lift a vehicle cover in order to view the VIN on nothing more than a hunch, as in this case. I believe that the Supreme Court already has sanctioned *904such a holding in Class. The officer in Class had little reason to be concerned about the ownership of a vehicle he had stopped for a speeding violation and a cracked windshield. See 475 U.S. at 108, 106 S.Ct. at 962-63. Nevertheless, checking the VIN was within the scope of his duty while investigating those minor violations. I believe that checking the VIN in this case was likewise within the scope of Officer Gorman’s duty to investigate something unusual that had mildly aroused his suspicions about vehicle ownership.
I do not suggest that any greater intrusion was within the scope of his duty based on those suspicions alone, nor do I think that this holding would create the broad precedent or lead to the general lawlessness suggested by the majority: “To create a precedent whereby the police may uncover or enter a car at any time to inspect the VIN would permit the police to rove the streets, to remove car covers, or break into any automobiles where the VIN number is obscured in some way” (emphasis added). My conclusion that lifting the vehicle cover in order to see the VIN was reasonable says nothing about breaking into or entering any car in which the VIN is not visible from the outside. Those are not the facts of this case and judgment on them is better left for another day.
My conclusion does not end the inquiry in this case, however. Class does not address what an officer may do when he or she discovers that the VIN is not located where the law requires. California law allows an officer to take a vehicle into custody, if the officer believes that the VIN has been unlawfully removed. Cal.Veh.Code § 10751. As the majority acknowledges, Officer Gor-man impounded the vehicles pursuant to § 10751 when he discovered that the VIN was not where the law requires.2
The Supreme Court has acknowledged that when a vehicle is rightfully within police custody, as here, an inventory search of the vehicle’s contents pursuant to standard procedures is not a search requiring a warrant or probable cause. South Dakota v. Opperman, 428 U.S. 364, 375-76, 96 S.Ct. 3092, 3100-01, 49 L.Ed.2d 1000 (1976). I would hold that Officer Gorman’s entry into the vehicles and his search of their contents was an inventory search, conducted to ascertain, if possible, who owned the vehicles that were then properly within his custody. That he did not wait until he had towed the vehicles to the impounding lot, or until he had a standard inventory form to fill out, does not make his actions significantly different from the inventory search approved by the Court in Opperman. Id. Officer Gorman’s action was not a “pretext to concealing an investigatory police motive,” which the Court has warned against. Opperman, 428 U.S. at 376, 96 S.Ct. at 3100. He was not looking for contraband or the fruits of any crime. He was simply looking for the VIN or registration papers in order to establish ownership conclusively, if possible.3
Because, in the circumstances of this case, lifting the vehicle cover in order to observe the VIN was reasonable, and because the entry and search of the vehicle’s contents, after discovering that the VIN was not where the law required, was a proper inventory search conducted to ascertain the vehicle’s owner, I would affirm the district court’s denial of Montes’ motion to suppress the evidence discovered in the search.

. For example, the California law involved in this case requires that the VIN not be “removed, defaced, altered or destroyed.... ” California Vehicle Code § 10751(a). Federal law requires that the VIN be placed so that it is readable to one standing outside the vehicle. 49 CFR § 571.115(S4.6).

. The fact that another officer, an expert in stolen cars, later found the VIN and determined that it had a numbering sequence consistent with vehicles manufactured in Mexico, does not affect Officer Gorman’s good faith belief that the VIN was not where it was supposed to be. Likewise, it does not affect the legitimacy of the impoundment based on that belief.

. Officer Gorman did suspect that the vehicles might be stolen, but his responsibility to establish the ownership of the vehicles in his custody exists with or without a suspicion that the vehicles might be stolen. Further, that a vehicle might be stolen is a possibility whenever the VIN is not where it should be. Therefore, his suspicion should not affect the result here.