Patel v. City of L.A.

• Decision Date: 17 July 2012
• Docket Number: No. 08–56567.,08–56567.
• Citation: 2012 Daily Journal D.A.R. 9827,12 Cal. Daily Op. Serv. 8050,686 F.3d 1085
• Parties: Naranjibhai PATEL and Ramilaben Patel, Plaintiffs–Appellants, v. CITY OF LOS ANGELES, a municipal corporation, Defendant–Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Ninth Circuit

686 F.3d 1085

12 Cal. Daily Op. Serv. 8050

2012 Daily Journal D.A.R. 9827

Naranjibhai PATEL and Ramilaben Patel, Plaintiffs–Appellants,

v.CITY OF LOS ANGELES, a municipal corporation, Defendant–Appellee.

No. 08–56567.

United States Court of Appeals,Ninth Circuit.

Argued and Submitted Dec. 6, 2010.

Filed July 17, 2012.

Frank A. Weiser, Los Angeles, CA, for appellants Naranjibhai Patel and Ramilaben Patel.

Rockard J. Delgadillo, City Attorney, Laurie Rittenberg, Assistant City Attorney, Todd Leung (argued), Deputy City Attorney, Los Angeles, CA, for appellee City of Los Angeles.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Central District of California, Dale S. Fischer, District Judge, Presiding. D.C. No. 2:05–cv–01571–DSF–AJW.

Before: HARRY PREGERSON, RICHARD R. CLIFTON, and CARLOS T. BEA, Circuit Judges.

Opinion by Judge CLIFTON; Dissent by Judge PREGERSON.

OPINION

CLIFTON, Circuit Judge:

Plaintiffs Naranjibhai Patel and Ramilaben Patel are owners and operators of motels in Los Angeles. They challenge the constitutionality of Los Angeles Municipal Code (LAMC) § 41.49, which requires operators of hotels in the City to maintain certain guest registry information and to make that information available to police officers on request. Appellants contend that LAMC § 41.49 is facially unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment because it authorizes unreasonable invasions of their private business records without a warrant or pursuant to any recognized warrant exception. Following a bench trial on stipulated evidence, the district court held that the ordinance was reasonable and granted judgment in favor of the City, concluding that the hotel operators did not establish that they had a privacy interest in the guest registry information.

A facial challenge is “the most difficult challenge to mount successfully, since the challenger must establish that no set of circumstances exist under which the Act would be valid.” United States v. Salerno, 481 U.S. 739, 745, 107 S.Ct. 2095, 95 L.Ed.2d 697 (1987); see Washington State Grange v. Washington State Republican Party, 552 U.S. 442, 449, 128 S.Ct. 1184, 170 L.Ed.2d 151 (2008) (“ i.e., that the law is unconstitutional in all of its applications”). That the ordinance might operate unconstitutionally under some circumstances is not enough to render it invalid against a facial challenge. The Patels have not satisfied that high standard. As a result, this facial challenge to the ordinance fails. We affirm.

I. Background

The facts of this case are simple and undisputed. The only exhibit introduced at the bench trial was the text of LAMC § 41.49. The parties stipulated that the Patels have been and continue to be subjected to searches and seizures of their motel registration records by the police, pursuant to the ordinance, without consent or a warrant. The parties also stipulated that the only issue at trial was the facial constitutionality of LAMC § 41.49.

The ordinance defines “hotel” broadly to cover hotels, motels, inns, rooming houses, and other establishments offering space for overnight accommodations for rent for a period of less than 30 days. It requires that every operator of a hotel record certain information concerning its guests, including name and address; total number of guests; make, type and license number of the guest's vehicle if parked on hotel premises; date and time of arrival; scheduled date of departure; room number; rate charged and collected; method of payment; and the name of the hotel employee who checked the guest in. The record may be kept in electronic, ink, or typewritten form. LAMC § 41.49(2). The ordinance requires that the record be kept on the hotel premises in the guest reception area or in an adjacent office for at least 90 days after the last entry. It provides specific requirements for the form of the guest register and requires that it must be printable if maintained electronically. LAMC § 41.49(3).

With regard to the authority of the police to require that the registration records be made available, the ordinance provides that:

The record ... 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.

LAMC § 41.49(3)(a).

Based on the stipulated record, the district court entered judgment in favor of the City. The Patels timely appealed.

II. Discussion

We review interpretations of and constitutional challenges to regulations de novo. Mapes v. United States, 15 F.3d 138, 140 (9th Cir.1994). A district court's grant of summary judgment is reviewed de novo as well. Hapner v. Tidwell, 621 F.3d 1239, 1244 (9th Cir.2010).

The Fourth Amendment protects “[t]he right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures.” Not all intrusions violate the Fourth Amendment—only “unreasonable” ones do. As the Supreme Court has observed, “ ‘reasonableness is still the ultimate standard’ under the Fourth Amendment.” Soldal v. Cook County, 506 U.S. 56, 71, 113 S.Ct. 538, 121 L.Ed.2d 450 (1992) (quoting Camara v. Municipal Court of San Francisco, 387 U.S. 523, 539, 87 S.Ct. 1727, 18 L.Ed.2d 930 (1967)).

The Fourth Amendment applies “when government officers violate a person's ‘reasonable expectation of privacy.’ ” United States v. Jones, –––U.S. ––––, 132 S.Ct. 945, 950, 181 L.Ed.2d 911 (2012). In addition, the Fourth Amendment embodies “a particular concern for government trespass upon the areas (‘persons, houses, papers, and effects') [the Fourth Amendment] enumerates.” Id.¹ The “reasonable-expectation-of-privacy test has been added to, not substituted for, the common-law trespassory test.” Id. at 952. We will discuss both in turn.

A. Reasonable expectation of privacy

Most applications of the Fourth Amendment focus on an individual's “reasonable expectation of privacy.” See Minnesota v. Carter, 525 U.S. 83, 88, 119 S.Ct. 469, 142 L.Ed.2d 373 (1998) (“in order to claim the protection of the Fourth Amendment, a [person] must demonstrate that he personally has an expectation of privacy in the place searched, and that his expectation is reasonable”). The expectation of privacy must be “one which society accepts as objectively reasonable.” United States v. Thomas, 447 F.3d 1191, 1196 (9th Cir.2006).

The information covered by the Los Angeles ordinance principally concerns hotel guests. The information does not, on its face, appear confidential or “private” from the perspective of the hotel operator.

We have already held that hotel guests do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in guest registry information once they have provided it to the hotel operator. United States v. Cormier, 220 F.3d 1103, 1108 (9th Cir.2000). We noted that the information at issue in that case, the guest's name and room number, was not “highly personal information.” Id. We also noted that once the guest has voluntarily revealed factual information to the hotel in the process of checking in, he can no longer claim a reasonable expectation of privacy in that information, citing United States v. Miller, 425 U.S. 435, 441–43, 96 S.Ct. 1619, 48 L.Ed.2d 71 (1976) (holding that a bank customer did not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in records maintained by the bank). Cormier, 220 F.3d at 1108.

The Patels presented no evidence to support their contention that hotel owners and operators, including themselves, have their own expectation of privacy in the information contained in guest registers. It may be true, as they allege, that the information could be used by the hotel operators for other purposes, but that does not mean hotel owners have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the registers. Just because information can be used by a business does not mean that the business owner desires to keep the information private, or that society would accept such a desire as objectively reasonable. Here, there is no evidence that all hotel owners affected by the regulation even consider the information to be private, let alone that any such expectation is reasonable.

Moreover, the Patels have presented no evidence that hotel owners customarily maintain guest registers in a manner that would support a claim of privacy. As Miller and Cormier recognized, once information is revealed to others it is unlikely that a reasonable expectation of privacy can be established. An old-fashioned guest register may take the form of a book located on the counter in the guest reception area, a form that would appear to satisfy the ordinance. But it is unlikely society would recognize a reasonable expectation of privacy in information kept in a manner so easily accessible by anyone entering the hotel.

To be clear, we do not hold that a hotel owner or operator can never have a reasonable expectation of privacy in guest register information. To this end, we reject the argument of the City that hotel owners can never have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the guest registries simply because the regulation informs them that the police can inspect the registries on request. An individual's otherwise reasonable expectation of privacy cannot be so easily stripped away merely by the adoption of a regulation authorizing searches of an item or location. To hold otherwise would allow the government to conduct warrantless searches just by announcing that it can. See United States v. Consol. Coal Co., 560 F.2d 214, 217 (6th Cir.1977), vacated and remanded on other grounds,436 U.S. 942, 98 S.Ct. 2841, 56 L.Ed.2d 783 (1978), judgment reinstated,579 F.2d 1011 (6th Cir.1978), cert. denied439 U.S. 1069, 99 S.Ct. 836, 59 L.Ed.2d 34 (1979) (“Even where a statute requires records to be maintained and authorizes on-premises inspection of them in the normal course, no precedent sanctionsdirect access to the records without demand in the absence of a search...