Naranjibhai Patel, Ramilaben Patel had challenged an ordinance
By Raif Karerat
WASHINGTON, DC: In a case that challenges the notions of what the Fourth Amendment may allow, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments for the City of Los Angeles v. Patel on March 3. The eventual verdict could impact the tracking methods utilized by police to track down criminals across the nation.
Residing at the core of the issue is whether a city can authorize police to routinely inspect hotel guest registries without individualized suspicion or judicial supervision.
The lawsuit originated when the plaintiffs, hotel owners Naranjibhai and Ramilaben Patel, challenged a city ordinance that required hotels to maintain detailed guest registries and provide them to police for inspection sans a warrant or any judicial review, calling it unconstitutional under the First and Fourth Amendments.
The district court first deemed the ordinance did not violate the Fourth Amendment, and a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reaffirmed the decision before subsequently reversing the lower court’s judgment during a rehearing.
The appellate court held that the hotel records were private “papers” protected by the Fourth Amendment and that the Los Angeles Police Department’s warrantless search provision was unreasonable because it does not provide any sort of judicial review of an officer’s demand to inspect a hotel’s records, according to the Oyez Project at Chicaco-Kent, a multimedia archive devoted to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Per the Electronic Privacy Information Center, or EPIC:
The Supreme Court long ago recognized that the freedom of individuals to associate with others of like mind is a core First Amendment right; the abridgment of this right occurs where the government seeks to identify people who participate in these activities. This ordinance, which grants local officials the authority to inspect guest registries of hotels in Los Angeles, directly implicates the freedom to participate in political, social, and religious associations that rely on hotels to facilitate their meetings and conferences. Given the significant First and Fourth Amendment interests at stake in the collection, retention, and inspection of these sensitive guest lists, the Court should affirm the judgment of the Ninth Circuit and find that[the Los Angeles ordinance] is facially unconstitutional.
“There is no evidence that the books are being cooked,” petitioned the hoteliers, adding that the city “cannot explain why it even needs the ability to search without a warrant.”
The City of Los Angeles called the statement empty rhetoric from business owners who “are either hopelessly naïve or darkly misleading [the] court.”