Court Opinion

ID: 9657444
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 20:26:35.564868+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:13:45.312745
License: Public Domain

SHIRLEY S. ABRAHAMSON, J.
(dissenting). The complaint alleges that the Cedarburg police chief and police sergeant conducted police surveillance of the plaintiff, that is, continued observation of the plaintiff's public activities and collection and maintenance of publicly available information on the plaintiff, to further the purely personal interests of the chief and the plaintiff’s wife. To justify their conduct the defendants publicly stated — knowing they had no basis for the assertions — that they suspected the plaintiff of using or distributing cocaine or other unlawful drugs. The plaintiff alleges that he has suffered embarrassment and damage to his reputation and career.
*80The majority concludes that the United States Constitution offers the plaintiff no protection. I disagree. Our Constitution does not tolerate this kind of arbitrary and malicious police surveillance and defamatory commentary. "Our Constitution is designed to maximize individual freedom within a framework of ordered liberty." Kolender v. Lawson, 461 U.S. 352, 357 (1983).
The fourteenth amendment ensures that each of us is free from governmental surveillance unless the government has a legitimate reason for singling out one of us for special scrutiny. In this case there was no rational basis for governmental surveillance — e.g., the plaintiff was not suspected of engaging in criminal activity or of associating with persons engaged in criminal activity.
Government officials who violate our expectation that they will not observe and record our activities— unless the government has a justifiable interest in the surveillance — contravene the fourth amendment's protection against unreasonable search and seizure, the first amendment's protection of free speech and the related right of association, and the fourteenth amendment's protection against deprivation of liberty without due process of law.
I am authorized to state that CHIEF JUSTICE NATHAN S. HEFFERNAN and JUSTICE WILLIAM A. BABLITCH join in this dissent.