Court Opinion

ID: 9574765
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 21:07:55.832542+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:44:58.215290
License: Public Domain

KOZINSKI, Chief Judge, with whom Judge GOULD joins,
concurring:
The interesting and difficult question at the heart of this case is whether federal *983judges can force government officials to subdivide classes of people subject to a valid Fourth Amendment search into subclasses that present a materially different Fourth Amendment calculus. That question can arise in many contexts, and the answer will have far-reaching consequences.
There was a time in our constitutional history when one might have argued that the Fourth Amendment requires individualized suspicion for every search and an appropriate constitutional balance as to each individual. If that was ever the case, it’s not so now: The government is entitled to search classes of individuals based on a balance struck for the class as a whole, regardless of whether there’s reasonable suspicion — or any suspicion at all — as to any particular member. Bell v. Wolfish tells us that everyone in prison who participates in a contact visit may be strip searched. 441 U.S. 520, 558-60, 99 S.Ct. 1861, 60 L.Ed.2d 447 (1979). We’ve known for some time that everyone who boards a commercial airplane may be subject to a fairly intrusive search, United States v. Edwards, 498 F.2d 496, 500 (2d Cir.1974) (Friendly, J.), as may everyone who enters a public building, McMorris v. Alioto, 567 F.2d 897, 900-01 (9th Cir.1978) (Kennedy, J.). We’ve said that truck drivers can be searched without individual suspicion. Int'l Brotherhood of Teamsters v. Dep’t of Transp., 932 F.2d 1292, 1300 (9th Cir.1991). And the Supreme Court has approved such suspicion-less searches for railroad workers, Skinner v. Ry. Labor Executives Ass’n, 489 U.S. 602, 624, 109 S.Ct. 1402, 103 L.Ed.2d 639 (1989), student athletes, Vernonia Sch. Dist. 47J v. Acton, 515 U.S. 646, 665, 115 S.Ct. 2386, 132 L.Ed.2d 564 (1995), students participating in other extracurricular activities, Bd. of Educ. of Indep. Sch. Dist. No. 92 of Pottawatomie County v. Earls, 536 U.S. 822, 838, 122 S.Ct. 2559, 153 L.Ed.2d 735 (2002), customs agents, Nat’l Treasury Employees Union v. Von Raab, 489 U.S. 656, 677, 109 S.Ct. 1384, 103 L.Ed.2d 685 (1989), prisoners released on parole, Samson v. California, 547 U.S. 843, 846, 126 S.Ct. 2193, 165 L.Ed.2d 250 (2006), and people crossing the border, United States v. Martinez-Fuerte, 428 U.S. 543, 545, 96 S.Ct. 3074, 49 L.Ed.2d 1116 (1976).
The class to be searched is generally defined by the activity in question: In Bell, it was the class of all inmates who had contact visits; in other situations it’s all those who seek to board an aircraft, enter a building, drive a truck, perform certain law enforcement functions or engage in particular extra-curricular activities. In a very important sense, such classifications trade the protection afforded by individualized suspicion for protection derived from the fact that the government treats all similarly situated people in precisely the same way.
Which brings us to the hard question: Do individuals subject to class-wide search based on risks attributable to the class as a whole have a constitutional right to get themselves certified as a sub-class as to which a lesser search, or no search at all, is reasonable? For example, should some people be exempt from the inconvenience and delay of airport searches because they belong to a sub-class that has a materially lower likelihood of hijacking a plane — e.g. the class of federal judges nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate? Or should certain individuals who enter public buildings be exempt from search because they belong to a learned profession and therefore present a lower risk? Compare Klarfeld v. United States, 944 F.2d 583, 588 (9th Cir.1991) (Pregerson, J., concurring in the result), with Klarfeld v. United States, 962 F.2d 866, 870 (9th Cir.1992) (Kozinski, J., dissenting from denial of rehearing en banc). This *984question could be posed multiple times for any regime where searches are authorized based on suspicion applicable to a class— by truck drivers with exemplary driving records; customs agents who have never been subject to discipline; high school football players who maintain a B + average (few); prison inmates convicted of genteel crimes; the list is endless.
The Supreme Court has held that individuals are sometimes entitled to an individualized Fourth Amendment calculus, and at other times they’re entitled to a class-wide calculus. See, e.g., Skinner, 489 U.S. at 624, 109 S.Ct. 1402. But it has never held that they’re entitled to carve out a sub-class as to which a different Fourth Amendment balance must be struck. In the absence of Supreme Court guidance, I am reluctant to take that step. I can think of at least three reasons, all illustrated by this case, why it might not be such a swell idea.
First, there’s a degree of subjectivity that attends any classification, and that subjectivity can easily transform into elitism. It’s no coincidence, I believe, that the class of people selected for favorable treatment by the district court in this case are those who have been arrested for the kinds of crimes that any of us, or at least our friends and neighbors, might be arrested for: those who violate traffic laws, leash laws, or insurance requirements, or maybe the Martha Stewarts and Bernie Ebbers of the world. Plaintiff Michael Marrón was arrested for “credit card fraud at the Hotel Nikka [sic],” where any of us might stay when visiting San Francisco. Mary Bull’s story might seem less compelling if she had been arrested for vandalism ordinaire, e.g. throwing bricks at a store window, rather than vandalism chic, throwing fake blood at a political protest. Steve Noh was arrested for battery “while celebrating Gay-Pride Week in the Castro,” and Jonah Zern was arrested for resisting a police officer at a “peace” rally. We can imagine one of our close relatives, perhaps a child or grandchild, being put in jail under such circumstances. It’s much harder to empathize when a strip search is suffered by those less like us, such as those who are suspected of engaging in robberies or street fights.
But in a democracy there is a very important value, enshrined in the Equal Protection Clause, in treating everyone who stands on the same footing alike. See Vernonia, Sch. Dist.47J, 515 U.S. at 663-64, 115 S.Ct. 2386. If the government treats you badly, there’s comfort in knowing that no one in the same situation is spared because of status, income or class. Not only does misery love company, but equal treatment for everyone — the rich and poor, the powerful and weak, blue collar as well as white — creates a strong political check against making the treatment worse. I’m convinced that airport searches would be far more intrusive if upper and middle-class Americans were exempt. Not only would the unexempt suffer the indignity of unequal treatment, but those conducting the searches would find good reason, and little political opposition, to ratchet up the duration and scope. The best protection for plaintiff de Ranleau, who is homeless, is to make sure that Marron, Bull, Noh and Zern are treated no better.
Second, lines drawn by courts rather than dictated by the functional requirements of an activity tend to be ambiguous, subject to manipulation and difficult to administer. Treating everyone who gets on a commercial plane the same is simple: If you want to get on a plane, you take off your shoes, leave behind any liquids over three ounces, remove your laptop from its carrying case and pass through the metal detector — no exceptions. If we were to *985order an exemption for the least risky segments of the population, we’d have to worry about how to identify those people— that is, what kind of screening we’d have to set up to make sure no fakers get into the system — and then, at the point of entry, we’d have to confirm that the people presenting themselves for boarding were, in fact, the ones cleared in advance. The operation, and recent failure, of the Clear system (which let you cut to the front of the line but otherwise didn’t exempt you from much of anything) showed that kind of exemption is difficult and costly to administer, and results in a lot of dirty looks from those you cut in front of.
Our case makes the point: The district court carved out a class of people to exempt from the strip search policy consisting of all those arrested on a charge not involving (a) weapons, (b) controlled substances, or (c) violence, and (d) as to whom there was not individualized reasonable suspicion. Sounds easy to separate the sheep from the goats, but it’s not. Keep in mind that a member of the class must satisfy (negatively) all four of the criteria — in other words, failure as to any one will take someone out of the class and make him subject to the strip-search policy. Each criterion is porous and subjective; there can be endless quarrels (and lawsuits) as to whether someone did or did not fall into any of the categories.
Let’s start with the first one, weapons. If you’re arrested for carrying a Gatling gun or Carl Gustav you would surely fall into the category, but what about a butterfly knife? How about a baseball bat or golf club? Or how about Lisa Giampaoli, one of the named plaintiffs, who was arrested because her dog bit a young man who was allegedly harassing her. Was that a leash law violation or an attack with a deadly canine? See People v. Nealis, 283 Cal.Rptr. 376 (Cal.Ct.App.1991). What about reckless driving: Traffic violation or attack with a ton of steel? Earlier this year, an en banc panel split 6-5 as to whether a shank made from melted-down Styrofoam and used by an inmate to wound another was a dangerous weapon. United States v. Smith, 561 F.3d 934 (9th Cir.2009) (en banc). If federal judges can’t agree, how are the deputies going to sort out such cases?
Next, controlled substances. Anyone caught with Smack or Crack falls into the category, but what about Valium or Oxy-Contin? What about unauthorized possession of steroids? Non-prescription drugs that contain pseudoephedrine? See, e.g., United States v. Jae Gab Kim, 449 F.3d 933 (9th Cir.2006). Alcohol and tobacco are highly controlled substances. Do plaintiffs Mangosing, Johnson and Bronson, arrested for public intoxication, fall into this category? Could the jail treat a merchant who sold cigarettes to a minor as someone charged with a controlled substance offense?
Now let’s take the third category of offenses for which strip searches are permitted under the district court’s order, namely people arrested for crimes of violence. We have a whole body of caselaw dealing with what constitutes a crime of violence for purposes of federal criminal and immigration law; among the activities we’ve considered are burglary, statutory rape, involuntary manslaughter, possession of an unregistered short-barreled shotgun, reckless vehicular assault, vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated, kidnapping, stalking, arson, escape, conspiracy to interfere with interstate commerce by robbery, grand theft, mayhem, recklessly setting fire to forest land, indecent liberties with a minor, carrying a gun while committing a drug offense and being an accessory after the fact to commission of murder for hire. And we often disagree. See, e.g., United *986States v. Chambers, 473 F.3d 724, 726 (7th Cir.2007) (escape is a crime of violence); United States v. Piccolo, 441 F.3d 1084, 1088 (9th Cir.2006) (no it’s not); United States v. Asberry, 394 F.3d 712, 715-16 (9th Cir.2005) (statutory rape is a crime of violence); id. at 722 (Bea, J., concurring) (no way); United States v. Wenner, 351 F.3d 969, 974 (9th Cir.2003) (burglary is not a crime of violence); id. at 977 (Wallace, J., dissenting) (is too); United States v. Johnson, 448 F.3d 1017, 1018 (8th Cir. 2006) (grand theft auto is); Van Don Nguyen v. Holder, 571 F.3d 524, 525 (6th Cir.2009) (au contraire); Malta-Espinoza v. Gonzales, 478 F.3d 1080, 1084 (9th Cir. 2007) (stalking isn’t); id. at 1088 (Duffy, J., dissenting) (“I respectfully dissent.”); United States v. Saavedra-Velazquez, 578 F.3d 1103, 1110 (9th Cir.2009) (Reinhardt, J.) (attempted robbery is); id. (Reinhardt, J., specially concurring) (or is it?); United States v. Trinidad-Aquino, 259 F.3d 1140, 1146 (drunk-driving-resulting-in-bodily-injury is a gentle crime); id. at 1147 (Kozinski, J., dissenting) (Bull!). How is a Deputy Sheriff confronted with a suspect arrested on possible charges of vandalism (like plaintiff Bull), burglary (like plaintiff Timbrook) or interfering with a police officer (like plaintiff Galvin) going to know whether such individuals are subject to search?
Finally, we get to the most troublesome category: cases where the deputies determine there’s individualized suspicion for a search. The district court found this includes anyone with a prior involving weapons, controlled substances or violence, thereby importing all the ambiguities discussed above. But even arrestees without relevant priors may be searched if their conduct raises suspicion that they’re smuggling contraband. So what exactly does that encompass? While struggling to prove that no member of the protected class has ever been found with contraband in their private spaces (a point the dissent takes up with some zest, Dissent at 2288, 2299, 2300-01, 2301-02, 2302, 2305), plaintiffs classify an arrestee who was “nodding off,” and another who was “nervous,” as inmates as to whom there was individualized suspicion. If “nodding off’ and “nervous” are sufficient for individualized suspicion, can “gave me a dirty look,” “was hyperactive” or “had poor posture” be far behind?
How, exactly, are deputies to know what does and does not amount to individualized suspicion, and who ultimately decides? Administering this category, like the others discussed above, will require a fair amount of trial and error, and a substantial degree of judicial involvement. No need to guess how much: A case pending before the same judge in the Northern District, Yourke v. City and County of San Francisco, No. 03-CV-03105-CRB, gives a foretaste. Yourke was arrested on a warrant for a traffic offense after police observed him engaged in what looked a lot like a drug deal. But Yourke claims it looked like an innocent chat between friends. Who’s to say who’s right? Not only will courts have to draw these difficult lines; jails will have to guess how courts will draw them. Being the subject of a court order and risking personal liability, deputies will probably err on the side of caution, to the detriment of prisoners faced with an increased risk of harm from smuggled contraband.
And when a search ends up in court, how will officers prove they had individualized suspicion? The record contains the report of a prisoner who told a guard, “wait to [sic] you see what I have up my ass.” Was this a joke that the deputies were required to ignore or did it give them grounds for a strip search? And what if the inmate denies making the statement? Or disputes that he was “nodding off’ or *987“nervous”? By its nature, individualized suspicion will rely on observations and diagnoses that will be hard (if not impossible) to record and relay to judges and juries months or years after the event.
Which brings me to my third objection to the judicial creation of sub-classes exempt from a search regime, namely that it will likely, perhaps inevitably, require far too much judicial involvement in the administration of the sub-class. It’s easy enough to say who is and is not going to enter the general population of a jail, just as it’s easy to say who is going to engage in a contact visit, board a commercial aircraft, enter a public building, drive a railroad or play high school football. The activity in question defines the class. But once courts start carving out constitutionally favored sub-classes because the members belong to some imaginary group with a lower risk-rating than the class as a whole, courts cannot avoid getting intimately involved in the conduct of the activity. This one case has generated a substantial record, countless lower court pleadings and no less than seven appellate opinions — so far. And Yourke, a case involving just a single strip search, has been ongoing over six years. If plaintiffs here succeed, every strip search will become a potential federal case. Federal judges will start running the jails, along with pretty much everything else.
The intervention won’t be limited to a single class action, either, as future litigants won’t be bound by the lines drawn in earlier cases. If these plaintiffs were to prevail, nothing would prevent a future plaintiff from trying to show that wife-beaters aren’t hardened criminals, generally act out of anger and frustration and not with premeditation and, though they might use a golf club or meat cleaver to threaten their mates, aren’t likely to be packing such implements up their wazoos when police come to arrest them. Could that claim be dismissed out of hand? Not according to plaintiffs (including Marcy Corneau, arrested for “fighting with her boyfriend”) and the dissent, who would put the onus on the jail to prove some past instance where a strip search of someone arrested for domestic violence yielded at least a dirk.
As this case illustrates, institutions aren’t equipped to deal with such challenges, which generally call for justifications for past conduct that no one knew would be required. Thus, plaintiffs and the dissent try to get mileage out of the fact that defendants have been unable to point to a single member of the class found carrying contraband. Dissent at 990-91, 997, 997-98, 998, 998-99, 1000. But at the time the searches were conducted, there was no class as defined by plaintiffs and the district court, so no one knew such justification would be required. The reports prepared by the jail to record the finding of contraband are accordingly ambiguous; very few conclusively show that the individual found with contraband was not a member of the class, and about half are entirely silent as to why the individual was searched. Plaintiffs want us to infer that no contraband was ever found among the class, but that’s hardly fair. The truth is that, on this record, we don’t know. Moreover, as Judge Tallman’s dissent from the panel opinion points out, plaintiffs’ central claim that members of the class never, ever conceal contraband is almost certainly wrong as a matter of fact. Bull v. City and County of San Francisco, 539 F.3d 1193, 1210 (9th Cir.2008) (Tallman, J., dissenting).
The reason past contraband reports don’t disclose the crime for which the individual was arrested is that it’s not germane to the purpose of the report, which is to account for a piece of property, possibly *988illegal or evidence of a crime, that has come into possession of the authorities. But if such reports are used in litigation, with omissions held against the institution, then a rational response will be to lengthen the reports to include any information that might be relevant to any case that any future plaintiff might bring. And it won’t be just reports: There will be constant tweaking of policies to respond to the next class action, endless training as to what constitutes a “weapon” or a “controlled substance” and countless hours spent giving depositions and testifying in court. Pretty soon, those involved in operating the institution will be devoting most of their time and energy to averting liability rather than running the institution effectively.
The dissent shrugs this off as no big problem because, supposedly, the San Francisco jail system operates better than ever under a policy enacted in 2004 that, in effect, adopts the district court’s order for the duration of the lawsuit. Dissent at 997. But our dissenting colleague misreads the record. Both Sheriff Hennessey and Under-Sheriff Dempsey express grave doubts about the new policy; they make it quite clear that they are putting up with it in order to limit their liability, but that they believe it “increases the danger to staff and inmates” and “will lead to a higher incidence of illegal contraband in the jails.” The snippet of quotation excerpted in the dissent, to the effect that the new policy “strikes the right balance between safety and the rights of inmates,” id., comes from a portion of the Dempsey affidavit dealing with a different search policy that is not at issue in this appeal. The dissent is simply mistaken in suggesting that the interim intake policy works as well as the challenged policy.
I have a difficult time justifying this kind of judicial interference in what are quintessentially executive functions. In the absence of guidance from the Supreme Court — which is entirely absent — I don’t believe we have the authority to carve out sub-classes of individuals under the Fourth Amendment who must be given preferred treatment by the government. Indeed, the Court’s opinion in Bell v. Wolfish suggests otherwise. See 441 U.S. at 558-60, 99 S.Ct. 1861. Some prisoners pose a much lower risk of accepting contraband on contact visits, and some visitors are far less likely to bring contraband than others. But nothing in Bell suggests that Ivan Boesky, Michael Milken or Martha Stewart must be treated better than other prisoners after a contact visit with their white-shoe lawyers. The possibility of these kinds of distinctions is markedly absent from the Court’s discussion.
Thus, while I join Judge Ikuta’s excellent opinion in full, I concur on the separate ground that I do not believe we, as inferior federal judges, have the authority to grant plaintiffs the relief they seek.