City of L. A. v. Patel

• Decision Date: 22 June 2015
• Docket Number: No. 13–1175.,13–1175.
• Citation: 192 L.Ed.2d 435,576 U.S. 409,135 S.Ct. 2443
• Parties: CITY OF LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, for Petitioner v. Naranjibhai PATEL, et al.
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

576 U.S. 409

135 S.Ct. 2443

192 L.Ed.2d 435

CITY OF LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, for Petitioner

v.Naranjibhai PATEL, et al.

No. 13–1175.

Supreme Court of the United States

Argued March 3, 2015.

Decided June 22, 2015.

E. Joshua Rosenkranz, New York, NY, for Petitioner.

Thomas C. Goldstein, Bethesda, MD, for Respondent.

Michael R. Dreeben for the United States as amicus curiae, by special leave of the Court, supporting the petitioner.

E. Joshua Rosenkranz, Robert M. Loeb, Rachel Wainer Apter, Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP, New York, NY, Orin S. Kerr, Washington, DC, Michael N. Feuer, City Attorney, James P. Clark, Chief Deputy City Attorney, Thomas H. Peters, Chief Assistant City Attorney, Gregory P. Orland, Counsel of Record, Senior Counsel, Los Angeles, CA, for Petitioner.

Thomas C. Goldstein, Kevin K. Russell, Tejinder Singh, Goldstein & Russell, P.C., Bethesda, MD, Frank A. Weiser, Counsel of Record, Los Angeles, CA, for Respondents.

Justice SOTOMAYOR delivered the opinion of the Court.

Respondents brought a Fourth Amendment challenge to a provision of the Los Angeles Municipal Code that compels "[e]very operator of a hotel to keep a record" containing specified information concerning guests and to make this record "available to any officer of the Los Angeles Police Department for inspection" on demand. Los Angeles Municipal Code §§ 41.49(2), (3)(a), (4) (2015). The questions presented are whether facial challenges to statutes can be brought under the Fourth Amendment and, if so, whether this provision of the Los Angeles Municipal Code is facially invalid. We hold facial challenges can be brought under the Fourth Amendment. We further hold that the provision of the Los Angeles Municipal Code that requires hotel operators to make their registries available to the police on demand is facially unconstitutional because it penalizes them for declining to turn over their records without affording them any opportunity for precompliance review.

I

A

Los Angeles Municipal Code (LAMC) § 41.49 requires hotel operators to record information about their guests, including: the guest's name and address; the number of people in each guest's party; the make, model, and license plate number of any guest's vehicle parked on hotel property; the guest's date and time of arrival and scheduled departure date; the room number assigned to the guest; the rate charged and amount collected for the room; and the method of payment. § 41.49(2). Guests without reservations, those who pay for their rooms with cash, and any guests who rent a room for less than 12 hours must present photographic identification at the time of check-in, and hotel operators are required to record the number and expiration date of that document. § 41.49(4). For those guests who check in using an electronic kiosk, the hotel's records must also contain the guest's credit card information. § 41.49(2)(b). This information can be maintained in either electronic or paper form, but it must be "kept on the hotel premises in the guest reception or guest check-in area or in an office adjacent" thereto for a period of 90 days. § 41.49(3)(a).

Section 41.49(3)(a)—the only provision at issue here—states, in pertinent part, that hotel guest records "shall be made available to any officer of the Los Angeles Police Department for inspection," provided that "[w]henever possible, the inspection shall be conducted at a time and in a manner that minimizes any interference with the operation of the business." A hotel operator's failure to make his or her guest records available for police inspection is a misdemeanor punishable by up to six months in jail and a $1,000 fine. § 11.00(m) (general provision applicable to entire LAMC).

B

In 2003, respondents, a group of motel operators along with a lodging association, sued the city of Los Angeles (City or petitioner) in three consolidated cases challenging the constitutionality of § 41.49(3)(a). They sought declaratory and injunctive relief. The parties "agree[d] that the sole issue in the ... action [would be] a facial constitutional challenge" to § 41.49(3)(a) under the Fourth Amendment. App. 195. They further stipulated that respondents have been subjected to mandatory record inspections under the ordinance without consent or a warrant. Id., at 194–195.

Following a bench trial, the District Court entered judgment in favor of the City, holding that respondents' facial challenge failed because they lacked a reasonable expectation of privacy in the records subject to inspection. A divided panel of the Ninth Circuit affirmed on the same grounds. 686 F.3d 1085 (2012). On rehearing en banc, however, the Court of Appeals reversed. 738 F.3d 1058, 1065 (2013).

The en banc court first determined that a police officer's nonconsensual inspection of hotel records under § 41.49 is a Fourth Amendment "search" because "[t]he business records covered by § 41.49 are the hotel's private property" and the hotel therefore "has the right to exclude others from prying into the[ir] contents." Id., at 1061. Next, the court assessed "whether the searches authorized by § 41.49 are reasonable." Id., at 1063. Relying on Donovan v. Lone Steer, Inc., 464 U.S. 408, 104 S.Ct. 769, 78 L.Ed.2d 567 (1984), and See v. Seattle, 387 U.S. 541, 87 S.Ct. 1741, 18 L.Ed.2d 930 (1967), the court held that § 41.49 is facially unconstitutional "as it authorizes inspections" of hotel records "without affording an opportunity to ‘obtain judicial review of the reasonableness of the demand prior to suffering penalties for refusing to comply.’ "

738 F.3d, at 1065 (quoting See, 387 U.S., at 545, 87 S.Ct. 1737 ).

Two dissenting opinions were filed. The first dissent argued that facial relief should rarely be available for Fourth Amendment challenges, and was inappropriate here because the ordinance would be constitutional in those circumstances where police officers demand access to hotel records with a warrant in hand or exigent circumstances justify the search. 738 F.3d, at 1065–1070 (opinion of Tallman, J.). The second dissent conceded that inspections under § 41.49 constitute Fourth Amendment searches, but faulted the majority for assessing the reasonableness of these searches without accounting for the weakness of the hotel operators' privacy interest in the content of their guest registries. Id., at 1070–1074 (opinion of Clifton, J.).

We granted certiorari, 574 U.S. ––––, 135 S.Ct. 400, 190 L.Ed.2d 288 (2014), and now affirm.

II

We first clarify that facial challenges under the Fourth Amendment are not categorically barred or especially disfavored.

A

A facial challenge is an attack on a statute itself as opposed to a particular application. While such challenges are "the most difficult ... to mount successfully," United States v. Salerno, 481 U.S. 739, 745, 107 S.Ct. 2095, 95 L.Ed.2d 697 (1987), the Court has never held that these claims cannot be brought under any otherwise enforceable provision of the Constitution. Cf. Fallon, Fact and Fiction About Facial Challenges, 99 Cal. L.Rev. 915, 918 (2011) (pointing to several Terms in which "the Court adjudicated more facial challenges on the merits than it did as-applied challenges"). Instead, the Court has allowed such challenges to proceed under a diverse array of constitutional provisions. See, e.g., Sorrell v. IMS Health Inc., 564 U.S. ––––, 131 S.Ct. 2653, 180 L.Ed.2d 544 (2011) (First Amendment); District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570, 128 S.Ct. 2783, 171 L.Ed.2d 637 (2008) (Second Amendment); Chicago v. Morales, 527 U.S. 41, 119 S.Ct. 1849, 144 L.Ed.2d 67 (1999) (Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment); Kraft Gen. Foods, Inc. v. Iowa Dept. of Revenue and Finance, 505 U.S. 71, 112 S.Ct. 2365, 120 L.Ed.2d 59 (1992) (Foreign Commerce Clause).

Fourth Amendment challenges to statutes authorizing warrantless searches are no exception. Any claim to the contrary reflects a misunderstanding of our decision in Sibron v. New York, 392 U.S. 40, 88 S.Ct. 1889, 20 L.Ed.2d 917 (1968). In Sibron, two criminal defendants challenged the constitutionality of a statute authorizing police to, among other things, "stop any person abroad in a public place whom [they] reasonably suspec[t] is committing, has committed or is about to commit a felony." Id., at 43, 88 S.Ct. 1889 (quoting then N.Y. Code Crim. Proc. § 180–a). The Court held that the search of one of the defendants under the statute violated the Fourth Amendment, 392 U.S., at 59, 62, 88 S.Ct. 1889 but refused to opine more broadly on the statute's validity, stating that "[t]he constitutional validity of a warrantless search is pre-eminently the sort of question which can only be decided in the concrete factual context of the individual case." Id., at 59, 88 S.Ct. 1889.

This statement from Sibron —which on its face might suggest an intent to foreclose all facial challenges to statutes authorizing warrantless searches—must be understood in the broader context of that case. In the same section of the opinion, the Court emphasized that the "operative categories" of the New York law at issue were "susceptible of a wide variety of interpretations," id., at 60, 88 S.Ct. 1889 and that "[the law] was passed too recently for the State's highest court to have ruled upon many of the questions involving potential intersections with federal constitutional guarantees," id., at 60, n. 20, 88 S.Ct. 1889. Sibron thus stands for the simple proposition that claims for facial relief under the Fourth Amendment are unlikely to succeed when there is substantial ambiguity as to what conduct a statute authorizes: Where a statute consists of "extraordinarily elastic categories," it may be "impossible to tell" whether and to what extent it deviates from the requirements of the Fourth Amendment. Id., at 59, 61, n. 20, 88 S.Ct. 1889.

This reading of Sibron is confirmed by subsequent precedents. Since Sibron, the Court has entertained facial challenges under the Fourth Amendment to statutes authorizing warrantless searches. Se...