Can an ordinance require that a hotel be forced to turn over a hotel guest registry to a police officer without a warrant and without the hotel’s consent? The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals found that such an ordinance was facially invalid under the Fourth Amendment insofar as it authorizes inspections of the hotel’s records without affording an opportunity to “obtain judicial review of the reasonableness of the demand prior to suffering penalties for refusing to comply.” The U.S. Supreme Court is now reviewing that decision.
Los Angeles Municipal Code 41.49 requires hotel and motel operators to keep records with specific information about their guests. The code further requires that the list “shall be made available to any officers of the Los Angeles Police Department for inspection. Whenever possible, the inspection shall be conducted at a time and in a manner that minimizes any interference with the operation of the business.”
“The city stipulated that this provision authorizes police officers to inspect hotel guest records at any time without consent or a search warrant,” the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals noted in its opinion. “Failure to comply with an officer’s inspection demand is a misdemeanor, punishable by up to six months in jail and a $1000 fine.”
There are several ordinances around the country with similar provisions requiring hotels to hand over guest information to police officers without a warrant and without the hotel’s consent, including several in Michigan. (See Port Huron, Mich., Code § 12-252 (2013), Trenton, Mich., Code § 22-174 (2014), Warren, Mich., Code § 17-78 (2013))
Plaintiffs, motel owners in Los Angeles, challenged the provision of the Los Angeles code that required their records “be made available to any officer of the Los Angeles Police Department for inspection.” The motel owners argued that the code section was facially unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment.
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with the motel owners. Although the Ninth Circuit noted that an administrative record-inspection scheme does not have to require the issuance of a warrant, “it must at a minimum afford an opportunity for pre-compliance judicial review.” The LA ordinance, however, makes hotel owners guilty of a misdemeanor as soon as they refuse to comply with a police request to see their records. The Ninth Circuit therefore found that “this procedural deficiency affects the validity of all searches authorized by 41.49(3)(a), there are no circumstances in which the record-inspection provision may be constitutionally applied.”
The issues on appeal before the Supreme Court are as follows:
(1) Whether facial challenges to ordinances and statutes are permitted under the Fourth Amendment; and
(2) whether a hotel has an expectation of privacy under the Fourth Amendment in a hotel guest registry where the guest-supplied information is mandated by law and an ordinance authorizes the police to inspect the registry, and if so, whether the ordinance is facially unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment unless it expressly provides for pre-compliance judicial review before the police can inspect the registry.
