Clarence Thomas vs. Antonin Scalia on 4th Amendment and ‘Reasonable Suspicion’

The
U.S. Supreme Court handed down a major ruling today with profound
implications for the Fourth Amendment rights of all persons who
drive or ride in automobiles on public roads. At issue in
Navarette v. California was a traffic stop prompted by an
anonymous call to 911 claiming that a truck had driven the caller
off the road. Going by the information supplied in that call alone,
the police located a matching truck in the vicinity of the alleged
incident and pulled it over on suspicion of drunk driving. That
stop led to the discovery of 30 pounds of marijuana stashed in the
truck.

The question before the Supreme Court was whether that single
anonymous tip to 911 provided the police with reasonable suspicion
to stop the truck. Writing for the majority, Justice Clarence
Thomas ruled that the “the stop complied with the Fourth Amendment
because, under the totality of the circumstances, the officer had
reasonable suspicion that the driver was intoxicated.” While this
is a “close case,” Thomas acknowledged, it still passes
constitutional muster. Joining Thomas in that judgment was Chief
Justice John Roberts and Justices Anthony Kennedy, Stephen Breyer,
and Samuel Alito.

Writing in dissent, Justice Antonin Scalia came out swinging
against Thomas. “The Court’s opinion serves up a freedom-destroying
cocktail,” Scalia declared, joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg,
Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan. It elevates an anonymous and
uncorroborated tip above the bedrock guarantee of the Fourth
Amendment. “All the malevolent 911 caller need do is assert a
traffic violation, and the targeted car will be stopped, forcibly
if necessary, by the police.” That state of affairs, Scalia
declared, “is not my concept, and I am sure it would not be the
Framers’, of a people secure from unreasonable searches and
seizures.”