6/17/2016
Rental-unit inspection warrant upheld | Minnesota Lawyer
Minnesota Lawyer
Rental-unit inspection warrant upheld
By; Barbara L. Jones
June 17, 2016
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Taking a step away from a 2013 Minnesota Supreme Court opinion, the Court of Appeals held on June 8 that a city
need not have an individualized suspicion of a code violation in order to issue a search warrant to inspect rental
property. It turned back the argument that without such grounds, issuance of a warrant violates articles 1, section
10 of the Minnesota Constitution.
Ruling in a case involving Golden Valley, the court said it was governed by U.S. Supreme Court jurisprudence
because there is no principled basis to construe the Minnesota Constitution differently from the Fourth Amendment
in this context. In 1967, in Camara v. Mun. Ct. of City 8i Cty of San Francisco, the Supreme Court said that the
Fourth Amendment requires only reasonable legislative or administrative standards for an inspection and not specific
knowledge of the condition of a particular dwelling before issuing an administrative search warrant for a housing
inspection.
In an opinion written by Judge Jill Flaskamp Halbrooks, the court said that it lacked the requisite "clear and strong
conviction" that there is a principled basis to construe the Minnesota Constitution as granting greater protection for
individual rights than the federal Constitution.
The respondent landlords and tenant will seek Minnesota Supreme Court review, said their attorney, Anthony
Sanders of the Institute for Justice.
"We're going to ask the Supreme Court to finish the job they almost finished in [McCaughtry et al. v. City of Red
Wing]," Sanders said. McCaughtry said that a housing inspection ordinance was "susceptible to a limiting
construction that allows district courts to require individualized suspicion in any given case," but stopped short of
imposing such a requirement. It also said that the facial challenge to the ordinance failed because in some
circumstances, such as where the court required an individualized suspicion, issuance of a warrant could be
constitutional.
In a concurrence to McCaughtry, Justice Paul Anderson predicted that the Supreme Court would require some level
of individualized suspicion when the question came before it.
But the city's attorney, Ashleigh Leitch, said that the court appropriately balanced privacy
interests and public safety and that the court affirmed that Minnesota, like every other state,
follows Camara.
Privacy concerns outweighed
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6/17/2016
Rental-unit inspection warrant upheld | Minnesota Lawyer
Golden Valley's city code provides for inspection of rental dwellings every three years. In this
case, the landlords and tenants refused consent to an inspection, and the city sought an
Ashleigh Leitch
administrative warrant. The Hennepin County District Court judge refused to issue a warrant because there was no
individualized suspicion of a code violation. The court relied on McCaughry and Ascher v. Commissioner of Public
Safety, a 1994 Minnesota Supreme Court case that said that roadblocks to stop drivers in order to find those who
were alcohol-impaired violated article 1, section 10 of the state constitution.
That was error, the Court of Appeals said, because McCaughtry did not reach the question of individualized
suspicion.
An individualized suspicion is not required under either the federal or state constitution, the court continued.
Camara controls the interpretation of the federal constitution, and the court declined to depart from that case in
construing the virtually identical Minnesota constitution.
The court said that the Minnesota constitution could apply if the U.S. Supreme Court had made a sharp or radical
departure from precedent, had "retrenched" on a Bill of Rights issue or did not adequately protect Minnesotans'
basic liberties. The latter was the "heart of the parties' disagreement," the court said. That factor required more
than a conviction that the current court would decide the case differently, the court said, but necessitates a unique,
distinct or peculiar issue of state or local concern.
No such concern exists, the court said. It rejected arguments that Minnesota case law had made the state
constitution stronger than the Fourth Amendment, saying that it was not persuaded that criminal cases regarding
warrantless searches were instructive in the housing-inspection context. "The purpose, scope and procedure of a
rental-housing inspection is fundamentally different from that of a search for evidence of criminal activity," the court
said.
But Sanders said the District Court correctly relied on Ascher and other cases cited in the Golden Valley case. "They
are not that different" because they all have the government examining a person's private life, he said. The law is
supposed to protect the invasion of personal space for everyone, not just criminals, he said.
The Court of Appeals disagreed. As the Supreme Court held in Camara, the great need for housing inspections to
protect public safety outweighs the tenants' concerns, Halbrooks wrote.
In housing inspections, tenants have advance notice and the target of the search is not the tenants' personal
property, the court said.
Furthermore, the opinion appropriately protects tenants as well as landlords, Leitch said, "provid[ing] clear guidance
to cities in how to protect pubiic safety, especially in rental housing," she added.
Susan Naughton, who represented the amicus curiae League of Minnesota Cities, said that the organization
appeared out of an interest in public safety. Cities won't necessarily choose to implement a similar inspection
program but should have the authority to do so, she said.
Article 1, section 10 of the Minnesota Constitution
Unreasonable searches and seizures prohibited.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches
and seizures shall not be violated; and no warrant shall issue but upon probable cause, supported by oath or
affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched and the person or things to be seized.
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