Court Opinion

ID: 9488391
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 12:43:44.38261+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:52:51.388233
License: Public Domain

BATCHELDER, Circuit Judge,
concurring in the result.
While I concur that the motion to suppress was properly denied because the evidence seized arose from a consensual encounter and search, I write separately to dissent from the majority’s equal protection analysis. If officers need have no reason whatever to approach citizens for the purpose of engaging in consensual encounters, see Florida v. Bostick, 501 U.S. 429, 434, 111 S.Ct. 2382, 2386, 115 L.Ed.2d 389 (1991), I continue to be mystified as to how we can require officers who engage in a consensual encounter with someone of a minority race to “produce evidence that contradicts [that individual’s] claim that they acted based solely on racial considerations” in engaging in that encounter. Majority opinion at 174. As I indicated in my concurring opinion in United States v. Jennings, No. 91-5942, 1993 WL 5927, at *6 (6th Cir. Jan. 13, 1993) (unpublished), to adopt the burden-shifting analysis utilized by the majority is to hold that while a consensual encounter with a non-minority individual requires no basis for suspecting that individual of wrongdoing, a consensual encounter with a member of a minority race must be based on some articulable or particularized suspicion of a non-racial nature. The premise underlying an equal protection claim is that someone acting under color of law has deprived a citizen of a constitutional or statutory right on the basis of a classification into which that citizen fits. There is no constitutional right not to be encountered by law enforcement officers when that encounter is consensual. There can be no deprivation of a right that does not exist. The Fourteenth Amendment analysis in this context is simply not germane.