The United States Supreme Court recently affirmed a holding of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals regarding the privacy of hotel guest registries that was reviewed in this earlier blog post. In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court affirmed the Ninth Circuit’s conclusion that police lacked authority to examine at their discretion the guest registries of hotels or motels.
Discretionary inspections of the guest registries of hotels and motels violate constitutional prohibitions on unreasonable searches, the Supreme Court held, and laws that purport to give police the right to conduct them are invalid. For such a law to be valid, it would need to provide hotel or motel proprietors with an opportunity for what the court called “precompliance review,” which would evaluate whether a particular situation justified police inspection of the guest registry.
The Supreme Court’s ruling left some opening for the inspection of guest registries when police believe “exigent circumstances” present danger that the delay caused by obtaining a warrant would result in a threat to public safety or allow for the destruction of evidence. However, in most cases, if police want to inspect a registry, they must obtain what is usually required prior to conducting a search: a subpoena or warrant.
Written by Jack Carver.
