Court limits home searches

WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court narrowed police search powers Wednesday, ruling that officers must have a warrant to look for evidence in a couple’s home unless both partners present agree to let them in.

The 5 to 3 decision sparked a sharp exchange among the justices. The majority portrayed the decision as striking a blow for privacy rights and gender equality; dissenters said it could undermine police efforts against domestic violence, the victims of which are often women.

The ruling upholds a 2004 decision of the Georgia Supreme Court, but still makes a significant change in the law nationwide, because most other lower federal and state courts had previously said that police could search with the consent of one of two adults living together.

Now, officers must first ask a judicial officer for a warrant in such cases. Quarrels between husbands and wives, or boyfriends and girlfriends, keep police nationwide busy; here, for example, almost half of the 39,000 violent crime calls officers answered in 2000 involved alleged domestic violence.

Justice David Souter’s majority opinion said that the consent of one partner is inadequate because of “widely shared social expectations” that adults living together each have veto power over who can enter their shared living space. That makes a warrantless search based on only one partner’s consent “unreasonable,” and, therefore, unconstitutional.

“(T)here is no common understanding that one co-tenant generally has a right or authority to prevail over the express wishes of another, whether the issue is the color of the curtains or invitations to outsiders,” Souter wrote.

Chief Justice John Roberts Jr., writing his first dissent since joining the court in October, said the ruling’s “cost” would be “great,” especially in domestic dispute situations.

Roberts wrote that the ruling made no sense, given that the court had previously said it is constitutional for police to enter a house with the permission of one partner when the other is asleep or absent. Those rulings were unchanged by Wednesday’s decision.

Just by agreeing to live with someone else, a co-tenant has surrendered a good deal of the privacy that the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment was designed to protect, Roberts noted.

“The majority’s rule apparently forbids police from entering to assist with a domestic dispute if the abuser whose behavior prompted the request for police assistance objects,” he wrote.

But Souter called that argument a “red herring,” saying that police would still have legal authority to enter homes where one partner was truly in danger.