No. 13-1175
IN THE
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

CITY OF LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA,
Petitioner,
v.
NARANJIBHAI PATEL, ET AL.,
Respondents.
On Writ of Certiorari to the United States Court of
Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
BRIEF FOR THE CATO INSTITUTE AS AMICUS
CURIAE IN SUPPORT OF RESPONDENTS
JIM HARPER
Counsel of Record
ILYA SHAPIRO
JULIO COLOMBA
CATO INSTITUTE
1000 Mass. Ave., N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20001
(202) 842-0200
jharper@cato.org
Counsel for Amicus Curiae

 i

QUESTION PRESENTED
Whether the right of Los Angeles hoteliers “to be
secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects,
against unreasonable searches and seizures” is
infringed by a statute that requires them to make
their business records available for search on their
premises by “any officer of the Los Angeles Police
Department,” for any reason or no reason, and
without a warrant.

 ii
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
QUESTION PRESENTED .......................................... i
TABLE OF AUTHORITIES ...................................... iv
INTEREST OF AMICUS CURIAE ............................ 1
SUMMARY OF THE ARGUMENT ........................... 1
ARGUMENT ............................................................... 2
I.

THIS COURT SHOULD NOT FOCUS ON
“PRIVACY” BUT SHOULD APPLY THE
FOURTH AMENDMENT ON ITS OWN
TERMS. ....................................................... 2
A. The “Reasonable Expectation of Privacy”
Test Is a Poor Tool for Administering the
Fourth Amendment... ............................ 3
B. This Court Has Reduced Its Reliance on
the “Reasonable Expectation of Privacy”
Test... ....................................................... 5

II.

THE WARRANTLESS SEARCH SCHEME
IS A COLLECTION OF SEIZURES AND
SEARCHES THAT IS BEYOND THE
AMBIT OF PUBLIC WELFARE
REGULATION ............................................ 7
A. “Seizure” and “Search” Are Distinct
Activities, Even if They Often Occur
Together ................................................ 8

 iii
B. The Warrantless Search Scheme is a
Series of Seizures that Facilitates
Warrantless Search ............................... 9
C. The Warrantless Search Scheme Does
Not Regulate Against Harms,
Nuisances, and Risks, but Seizes and
Searches Uninvolved Parties and Their
Property in Furtherance of General Law
Enforcement ........................................ 11
III.

THE STATUTE ALLOWS
UNREASONABLE AND THUS
UNCONSTITUTIONAL SEARCHES ...... 14
A. The Statute Does Not Require a
Warrant, Does Not Restrict Itself to
Constitutional Circumstances, and
Places No Procedural Limits on
Government Agents’ Searching of Hotel
Records ................................................. 15
B. The “Administrative Search Doctrine” Is
Not Properly Applied to Hoteliers in
This Circumstance............................... 18
C. The California Bankers Case Did Not
Approve a Scheme Like Warrantless
Search Scheme Against Fourth
Amendment Challenge ........................ 19

CONCLUSION.......................................................... 23

 iv
TABLE OF AUTHORITIES
Page(s)
Cases
Arizona v. Gant,
556 U.S. 332 (2009) ............................................... 15, 16
Arizona v. Hicks,
480 U.S. 321 (1987) ....................................................... 8
Brown v. Legal Found. of Wash.,
538 U.S. 216 (2003) ..................................................... 14
Cal. Bankers Ass’n v. Shultz,
416 U.S. 21 (1974) ............................... 15, 19, 20, 21, 22
Florida v. Jardines,
133 S. Ct. 1409 (2013) ................................................... 6
Horne v. U.S. Dep’t of Agric.,
2015 U.S. LEXIS 623 (U.S., Jan. 16, 2015)
(No. 14-275) (cert. granted). ...................................... 14
Katz v. United States,
389 U.S. 347 (1967) ........................................... 2, 3, 4, 7
Kyllo v. United States,
533 U.S. 27 (2001) ........................................... 2, 5, 8, 23
Loretto v. Teleprompter Manhattan CATV Corp.,
458 U.S. 419 (1982) ..................................................... 13
New York v. Burger,
482 U.S. 691 (1987) ............................................... 18, 19

 v
New York v. Class,
475 U.S. 106 (1986) ....................................................... 8
Okla. Press Publishing Co. v. Walling,
327 U.S. 186 ............................................................ 23, 24
Patel v. City of Los Angeles,
738 F.3d 1058 (9th Cir. 2013) (en banc). ................ 17
Riley v. California,
134 S. Ct. 2473 (2014) ............................................... 6, 7
Sibron v. New York,
392 U.S. 40 (1967), ...................................................... 16
Soldal v. Cook County,
506 U.S. 56 (1992) ......................................................... 8
United States v. Jacobsen,
466 U.S. 109 (1984) ....................................................... 8
United States v. Jones,
132 S. Ct. 945 (2012) ................................. 5, 6, 8, 22, 23
United States v. Miller,
425 U.S. 435 (1976) ............................................... 21, 22
Statutes
Los Angeles Municipal Code §41.49 ............... 9, 10, 15
Cal. Civ. Code §1865 ....................................................... 12
Other Authorities
Pet. Brief ..................................................................... 16, 18
U.S. Brief ........................................................................... 16

 1

INTEREST OF AMICUS CURIAE1
The Cato Institute was established in 1977 as a
nonpartisan public policy research foundation
dedicated to advancing the principles of individual
liberty, free markets, and limited government. Cato’s
Center for Constitutional Studies was established in
1989 to promote the principles of limited
constitutional government that are the foundation of
liberty. Toward those ends, Cato publishes books and
studies, conducts conferences, produces the annual
Cato Supreme Court Review, and files amicus briefs.
The present case centrally concerns Cato because it
represents an opportunity to improve Fourth
Amendment doctrine and maintain that provision’s
protections in the modern era.
SUMMARY OF THE ARGUMENT
Contrary to popular belief, the Fourth
Amendment protects not privacy but the right to be
free from unreasonable searches and seizures. The
“reasonable expectation of privacy” test has proven
unworkable and is not up to the task of
administering the Fourth Amendment. This Court
should eschew it again in this case.
The warrantless search scheme established by
Los Angeles’s municipal code is comprised of many
seizures, which culminate in the seizure and search
of hotel papers. It is not a public welfare regulation
causing hoteliers to abate harms, nuisances, and
Pursuant to Rule 37.3(a), amicus states that all parties
filed blanket consents with the Court. In accordance with Rule
37.6, counsel affirms that no counsel for any party authored any
part of this brief and that only amicus made a monetary
contribution to its preparation or submission.
1

 2
risks. Instead, it conscripts them into surveillance
related to crimes to which they are mere bystanders.
The statute authorizes unreasonable—and thus
unconstitutional—searches. It does not require a
warrant or restrict itself to constitutional
circumstances like exigency, and it places no
procedural limits on government agents’ searches of
hotel records.
The “administrative search” doctrine, which
permits searches of parties at whom the relevant
regulatory scheme is directed, has no application to
this context. Some hotels may have proximity to
crimes—much like some people live in neighborhoods
with higher crime rates—but it is nothing like the
proclivity to crime in industries such as auto
dismantling.
In sum, the city simply has no justification for
granting itself a general license to seize and search
certain hotel records.
ARGUMENT
I. THIS COURT SHOULD NOT FOCUS ON
“PRIVACY” BUT SHOULD APPLY THE
FOURTH AMENDMENT ON ITS OWN
TERMS
The “reasonable expectation of privacy” test is a
poor tool for administering that Fourth Amendment.
Since at least the ruling in Kyllo v. United States,
533 U.S. 27 (2001), this Court has reduced its
reliance on that test for determining when searches
have occurred. This Court should again eschew the
use of select phraseology from one concurrence in
Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347 (1967), focusing
instead on applying the Fourth Amendment on its

 3
own terms. When a search or seizure occurs, its effect
on privacy is one consideration in determining
whether or not it was reasonable. Privacy invasion is
not, however, the sine qua non of unreasonable
searches and seizures.
Instead of asking whether Los Angeles hoteliers
have an “expectation of privacy” in their business
records, this Court should examine whether their
right “to be secure in their persons, houses, papers,
and effects, against unreasonable searches and
seizures” is infringed by a statute that requires them
to create business records and make them available
for search on their premises by “any officer of the Los
Angeles Police Department,” for any reason or no
reason, and without a warrant.
A. The “Reasonable Expectation of Privacy”
Test Is a Poor Tool for Administering the
Fourth Amendment
Katz is often treated as the lodestar of modern
Fourth Amendment jurisprudence. Unfortunately,
select phraseology has overtaken the rationale of
that case, dominating both case law and the
academic literature. By eschewing the “reasonable
expectation” language that Justice Harlan used in
his Katz concurrence, this Court can clear up the
doctrinal mess created by subsequent courts’ use of
this test to the exclusion of more textually based
analysis.
Indeed, the Katz majority did not rely on Justice
Harlan’s “reasonable expectation of privacy”
language. Instead, the Court rested its decision on
the physical and legal protections Charles Katz had
used to secure the privacy of his telephone
conversation. “What a person knowingly exposes to

 4
the public, even in his own home or office, is not a
subject of Fourth Amendment protection,” the Court
wrote. Katz, 389 U.S. at 351. “But what he seeks to
preserve as private, even in an area accessible to the
public, may be constitutionally protected.” Id. In the
paragraphs that followed, the Court discussed the
facts establishing that Katz’s phone conversations
were indeed private: Katz was in a phone booth made
of glass that concealed the sound of his voice. Id. at
352. Against the argument that Katz’s body was in
public for all to see, which would strip information he
produced there of Fourth Amendment protection, the
Court wrote: “what he sought to exclude when he
entered the booth was not the intruding eye—it was
the uninvited ear.” Id. The government’s use of a bug
to overcome the protections Katz had placed around
his communication was unreasonable in the absence
of a valid warrant. It was thus unconstitutional.
The “reasonable expectation of privacy” language
in Justice Harlan’s concurrence was an attractive
addendum, but standing alone it is weak as a rule for
deciding cases. As applied, that test reverses the
inquiry required by the Fourth Amendment and
biases Fourth Amendment doctrine against privacy.
Having a “reasonable expectation of privacy”
arises from giving physical and legal protection to
information, but this Court should no longer reason
backward from privacy “expectations” to Fourth
Amendment protection. It should not fixate on
privacy, but follow the reasoning required by the
Fourth Amendment itself, inquiring into the
existence of searches and seizures affecting
constitutionally protected interests and whether
those searches and seizures are reasonable.

 5
In other words, this Court should not ask whether
individuals’ expectations of privacy are reasonable. It
should investigate whether government agents’
seizures and searches are reasonable.
B. This Court Has Reduced Its Reliance on
the “Reasonable Expectation of Privacy”
Test
Kyllo may mark the beginning of a line of cases in
which this Court is finding a better route to Fourth
Amendment adjudication. The Court could have
found in Kyllo that the government violated a
“reasonable expectation of privacy” when its agents
used a thermal imager to gather external
temperatures from a home and draw inferences
about what goes on within. Instead, it followed the
inquiry dictated by the Fourth Amendment, asking
(1) whether there was a search and, if so, (2) whether
that search was reasonable. The Court analyzed the
two issues distinctly, finding (1) a search that (2) was
unreasonable: “Where, as here, the Government uses
a device that is not in general public use, to explore
details of the home that would previously have been
unknowable without physical intrusion, the
surveillance is a ‘search’ and is presumptively
unreasonable without a warrant.” 533 U.S. at 40.
In United States v. Jones, 132 S. Ct. 945 (2012),
this Court could have found that monitoring a
vehicle’s movements for four weeks is a search
because it offends “reasonable expectations of
privacy.” Indeed, on that ground, the concurrence
agreed with the majority opinion’s ruling. Id. at 964
(Alito, J., concurring in the judgment). But the
majority opinion was stronger for rooting its finding
of a “search” in the small property seizure involved

 6
when government agents converted a privately
owned vehicle to the government’s informationgathering purposes: “We hold that the Government’s
installation of a GPS device on a target’s vehicle, and
its use of that device to monitor the vehicle’s
movements, constitutes a ‘search.’” Id. at 945
(majority op.) (footnote omitted).2 Beyond recognized
exceptions to the rule, a search is presumptively
invalid without a warrant.
In Florida v. Jardines, 133 S. Ct. 1409 (2013),
this Court could have found that bringing a drugsniffing dog to the door of a home violates
“reasonable expectations of privacy.” Instead, it held
that the customary license to enter private property
does not extend to government agents “introducing a
trained police dog to explore the area around the
home in hopes of discovering incriminating
evidence.” Id. at 1416. Entering onto private property
adjacent to the home without license from the
property owner is a use of the land—a seizure—that
is unreasonable without a warrant.
Privacy is a relevant consideration when a seizure
or search has been identified and the Court examines
its reasonableness. So the Court last term in Riley v.
California, 134 S. Ct. 2473 (2014), assessed
searching of cell phones incident to arrest. One of the
factors in whether the searches of the cell phones
were reasonable was their effect on the privacy of
arrestees. Id at 2488. As they enjoy the presumption
of innocence, and because their phones contain a vast
The Court’s footnote here goes into the ownership status of
the car, signaling the importance of the property invasion—the
seizure—that facilitated the four-week search for Jones’s car’s
location.
2

 7
trove of personal information about them and others,
the Court pithily summarized its rule about searches
of suspects’ phones: “get a warrant.” Id. at 2495.
These cases are salutary because they adhere
more closely to the line of inquiry suggested by the
Fourth Amendment: Was there a seizure or search?
Was it of persons, houses, papers, or effects? Was it
reasonable?
In this case, all parties agree—and lower court
rulings rely—on the premise that the statute
produces a Fourth Amendment search of hoteliers’
papers. There is no call for use of the test from
Justice Harlan’s concurrence in Katz, and this Court
need not evaluate the “expectation of privacy” to look
for a search. The privacy of hoteliers and their guests
is a consideration in determining whether the
warrantless search scheme is reasonable. That
assessment should be made with a view to the
entirety of the investigatory scheme.
II. THE WARRANTLESS SEARCH SCHEME IS
A COLLECTION OF SEIZURES AND
SEARCHES THAT IS BEYOND THE AMBIT
OF PUBLIC WELFARE REGULATION
As in many Fourth Amendment cases, the
warrantless search scheme at issue here is not a
single search, but a series of seizures and searches.
Articulating and distinctly examining them can
improve this Court’s consideration of the issues,
while modeling for lower courts how to apply the
Fourth Amendment in difficult cases.
The warrantless search scheme falls outside the
traditional ambit of public welfare regulation, which
requires the creators of public nuisances, harms, and

 8
risks to abate them. Instead, it seizes the assets and
efforts of innocent private parties, dragooning them
into the government’s law enforcement apparatus.
A. “Seizure” and “Search” Are Distinct
Activities, Even if They Often Occur
Together
This Court’s cases have rarely defined “seizure”
distinctly from “search.” United States v. Jacobsen,
466 U.S. 109, 114 n.5 (1984) (“[T]he concept of a
‘seizure’ of property is not much discussed in our
cases”). This is in part because incursions on
property rights—seizures—are often the means
government agents use to discover information:
Seizure is the way they search.
Often, seizures and the searches they facilitate
have the same legal justification—or they both lack
one. See, e.g., Jones, 132 S. Ct. at 949 (“The
Government physically occupied private property for
the purpose of obtaining information.”). It is
convenient to refer to small seizures and the
searches they facilitate collectively as though they
are a unitary “search.” See, e.g., Arizona v. Hicks, 480
U.S. 321, 324 (1987) (moving of stereo equipment to
gather serial numbers “constitute[d] a ‘search’”).
Unfortunately, the convenience of lumping together
seizures and searches has occasionally permitted this
Court to ignore small seizures. See, e.g., New York v.
Class, 475 U.S. 106, 114 (1986) (police officer lifting
papers not considered a seizure).
Seizures and searches are not the same, and they
do not always occur together. See, e.g., Kyllo, 533
U.S. at 32 (“a ‘search’ despite the absence of
trespass”); Soldal v. Cook County, 506 U.S. 56 (1992)
(seizure of mobile home, not part of search).

 9
Collapsing important distinctions between seizure
and search can obscure the legal import of
government agents’ actions—particularly when
information is involved. This is because the Fourth
Amendment consequences of information seizures
spring not so much from possession of information as
from its use.
The warrantless search scheme in this case puts
hoteliers to work for the government, gathering
information for prospective investigations. The
government’s use of hoteliers’ time and property
culminates in the seizure of that information by
government agents with no warrant or probable
cause, so they can search it.
B. The Warrantless Search Scheme is a
Series of Seizures that Facilitates
Warrantless Search
To comply with L.A. Municipal Code §41.49, every
hotelier must maintain a record of the name and
address of every guest, as well as the make, type,
and license number of each guest’s vehicle.
§41.49(2)(1)(i),(ii). Every hotelier receiving a guest
that pays cash (and certain other guests) must collect
identity information, §41.49(2)(1)(iii), gathering such
information from government-issued documents and
presumably
turning
away
guests
without
government-issued ID. See §41.49(1) (definition of
“identification document”). Hoteliers must also
collect the precise time of guests’ arrival,
§41.49(2)(2), and scheduled departure, §41.49(2)(5).
Every hotelier must dedicate an area on specific
parts of their premises for maintenance of this
record, and they must keep this record in this area
for at least 90 days from the date of the last entry.

 10
§41.49(3)(a). Every hotelier must make the record
resistant to tampering, and every hotelier must have
employee training and security measures in place to
protect the record and to facilitate government
agents’ access to the record. See §41.49(3)(b).
The municipal code details the construction and
layout of such records kept in book form or card form.
§41.49(3)(c). Any hotelier keeping the record in
electronic form must have software that allows for
printing of the record, §41.49(3)(c), and assumedly
each must have a printer or digital device that allows
the record to be copied for government agents. The
Code bars hoteliers from assigning staff to guest
reception if they have not been trained in
maintenance of this record. §41.49(5).
The definition of “hotel” is broad, see §41.49(1),
and it probably encompasses accommodations offered
in private homes and apartments through “sharing
economy” services such as AirBnB. These hoteliers
must allow government agents into their homes to
permit the statute’s administration.
The records hoteliers have been required to create
and keep in the specified form must be “made
available to any officer of the Los Angeles Police
Department for inspection.” §41.49(3)(a).
While many of these mandates track what
hoteliers are likely to do of their own accord, they
differ in many respects from what hoteliers would do
if left to their own devices. If Los Angeles hoteliers
keep their records for only 60 days, utilize lessertrained staff on the graveyard shift, accept patrons
that lack government-issued ID, or maintain their
records in a spiral-bound notebook rather than a

 11
permanently bound book, they are liable to a penalty
of six months in jail or a $1,000 fine.
The upshot of this regime is that Los Angeles
hoteliers, including AirBnBers, must dedicate their
time, money, and property to the government’s ends
as a condition of providing their services. The
warrantless search scheme turns them and their
property to the use of the government, depriving
them of each unit of time, money, and property that
they would otherwise use differently. All these
mandates are seizures of hoteliers’ property,
culminating in searches of their mandated records.
These seizures, and the culminating searches,
must all pass constitutional muster. They are not
excused from constitutional standards as public
welfare regulation.
C. The Warrantless Search Scheme Does Not
Regulate Against Harms, Nuisances, and
Risks,
but
Seizes
and
Searches
Uninvolved Parties and Their Property in
Furtherance of General Law Enforcement
There are plausible arguments that the giving
over of records under Los Angeles’s warrantless
search scheme is not always a seizure because there
are factual scenarios in which a hotelier may leave
records open to the public or volunteer them to
officers of the LAPD. These are weak arguments.
It is implausible in this day and age that hoteliers
would leave customer information open for all to see.
The defeat of the second argument is slightly more
subtle: There is no volunteering of information when
the statute’s terms have taken away the hotelier’s
right to deny government agents access. One does

 12
not “volunteer” an item to another by handing over
what a statute already deems his to take.
A more serious argument is that the L.A.
municipal code is an ordinary regulation of business
activity not subject to analysis under the Fourth
Amendment. It appears outwardly similar to
regulation that requires hoteliers to change bed
linens before a new guest occupies the bed, for
example. See Cal. Civ. Code §1865. But there is an
important difference between public welfare
regulation and conscription of private entities into
government service.
Whether they use it advisably or not, government
entities have broad latitude to regulate in favor of
the prosperity, well-being, or convenience of the
public at large. Social interests within the ambit of
regulatory authority include safety, order, economic
interest, and aesthetics.
The entities regulated in pursuit of these public
interests are almost universally those who threaten
public welfare as defined by legislators and
regulators. Safety regulation, for example, properly
requires construction companies to erect barricades
that physically protect the public, and to post signs
that warn employees of dangers. In economic terms,
these regulations cause construction firms to
internalize the costs they might impose on others.
Consider an alternative regulatory regime that
would require restaurants near construction sites to
erect barricades and signs protecting passersby from
assorted dangers. These restaurants may serve
meals to construction workers and they may benefit
indirectly from the increased customer base that a
new building will sustain. But they are bystanders to

 13
the construction project. Requiring them to look after
safety on work sites does not cause them to
internalize costs they impose on the public. Instead,
this hypothetical regulation takes their property—in
the form of time and money—for public use.
Loretto v. Teleprompter Manhattan CATV Corp.,
458 U.S. 419 (1982), usefully illustrates a regulation
on the wrong side of the “public welfare” line.
Providers of housing are subject to many regulations
that guard public welfare against ills and wrongs
that might be done in the provision of housing.
States have full power to require landlords “to
comply with building codes and provide utility
connections, mailboxes, smoke detectors, fire
extinguishers, and the like in the common area of a
building.” Loretto, 458 U.S. at 440. Each of these
things abates some nuisance or risk common in
dwellings, or fleshes out the obligations society
deems to inhere in the provision of housing.
However, a regulation obligating a landlord to
turn over even a small portion of her real property to
a third party falls afoul of the Fifth Amendment’s
restriction on takings. Such regulation may foster a
more vibrant market for media and entertainment,
but “a permanent physical occupation authorized by
government is a taking without regard to the public
interests that it may serve.” Id. at 442.
Conscripting hoteliers into law enforcement is
like giving landlords’ property to cable companies.
The public interest in abating crime may be strong,
but that does not change the status of hoteliers from
bystanders into responsible parties.
Amicus does not make the argument here that
the municipal code section in dispute is a taking

 14
under the Fifth Amendment.3 Instead, amicus
focuses on the statute’s imposition of a “public
welfare”-style obligation on a party that does not owe
it. That makes the seizure of that party’s property
(time and labor) and the search of its papers
unreasonable.
The Los Angeles ordinance conscripts hoteliers
into surveillance related to crimes to which they are
bystanders. Ultimately, in the step that respondents
here contest, it provides for seizure of their papers—
a specifically protected item under the Fourth
Amendment—so that those papers can be searched
by government agents, all without a warrant.
III. THE STATUTE ALLOWS UNREASONABLE
AND
THUS
UNCONSTITUTIONAL
SEARCHES
The L.A. municipal code does not require a
warrant, does not restrict searches to constitutional
circumstances, and places no limits on government
agents’ searches of the records it requires hoteliers to
create and maintain. Nor does the warrantless
search scheme give hoteliers any opportunity to
challenge searches before they occur.
The “administrative search” doctrine is not
properly applied to Los Angeles hoteliers.
That amendment’s historical focus on real property is only
beginning to mature into recognition that property in any form
may be constitutionally taken. See Brown v. Legal Found. of
Wash., 538 U.S. 216, 235 (2003) (citing Phillips v. Wash. Legal
Found., 524 U.S. 156, 172 (1998)) (forced “transfer of the
interest” in lawyers’ trust accounts—personal property—under
the “per se approach” is “akin to the occupation” of property “in
Loretto”); see also Horne v. U.S. Dep’t of Agric., 2015 U.S.
LEXIS 623 (U.S., Jan. 16, 2015) (No. 14-275) (cert. granted).
3

 15
“Administrative search” is used in furtherance of
regulation that abates nuisances, harms, and risks
that the parties searched have a substantial role in
creating. Provision of lodging does not have the
predisposing relationship to crime that pursuits such
as auto dismantling have, so hotels are inapt
candidates for “administrative search.”
The California Bankers case does not provide a
precedent approving the warrantless search scheme.
Cal. Bankers Ass’n v. Schultz, 416 U.S. 71 (1974). To
the extent it suggests that private parties can be
made to perform surveillance for the government of
activities to which they are bystanders, it deserves
reconsideration.
A. The Statute Does Not Require a Warrant,
Does Not Restrict Itself to Constitutional
Circumstances,
and
Places
No
Procedural
Limits
on
Government
Agents’ Searching of Hotel Records
Absent a warrant, the search and seizure of a
suspect’s property is “per se unreasonable” unless
justified by one of “a few specifically established and
well-delineated exceptions.” Arizona v. Gant, 556
U.S. 332, 338 (2009). The Los Angeles warrantless
search scheme, which permits searches of nonsuspects, makes no nod at all to this or other
constitutional limits on authority to search suspects.
The requirement that hoteliers’ papers must be
“made available to any officer of the Los Angeles
Police Department for inspection,” §41.49(3)(a),
contains no warrant requirement, of course. As
treated in the briefs of the petitioners and the U.S.
government, it envisions government agents
appearing and making immediate demand to search.

 16
That, according to this Court in Gant, is per se
unreasonable absent an exception to the warrant
requirement.
The statute does not restrict its applicability to
any such exception. It does not limit searches to
cases of exigency, for example. (And in cases of
exigency, no statute is required.) Indeed, the
warrantless search scheme does not even require
government agents to have a suspicion that their
search will reveal evidence of crime.
The statute at issue in Sibron v. New York, 392
U.S. 40 (1967), provides an instructive comparison. It
permitted a police officer to stop a person “whom he
reasonably suspects is committing . . . a felony” or
other offenses. Id. at 43. The statute in that case at
least tracked the constitutional requirement that
seizures be not unreasonable.
The statute here has no such limitation. Indeed,
the warrantless search scheme goes the other way.
The briefs of petitioners and the United States extol
“frequent, unannounced inspections” of Los Angeles
hotels, Pet. Brief at 39, and “surprise inspections” of
them, U.S. Brief at 33. These invasions of innocent
business owners’ premises would not be to discover
substantive crimes, but to ensure compliance with
the record-keeping regime. It is a virtue of the
system, in the government parties’ view, that private
business owners suspected of no crime should see
government agents on their premises routinely,
inspecting their business records to enforce
paperwork requirements.
In one sense, the statute does cabin the search
regime. It only provides for warrantless searching of
the papers that it required hoteliers to maintain. But

 17
constraining searches along this subject-matter
dimension must be small consolation to a business
owner, no suspect of crime, whose clientele may
bring government agents behind them to make
“frequent, unannounced inspections.”
All this can occur because of an acute failing of
the statute: its lack of procedural safeguards. As the
en banc Ninth Circuit found: “[Section] 41.49
provides no opportunity for pre-compliance judicial
review of an officer’s demand to inspect a hotel’s
guest records. . . . Hotel operators are thus subject to
the ‘unbridled’ discretion of officers in the field, who
are free to choose whom to inspect, when to inspect,
and the frequency with which those inspections
occur.” Patel v. City of Los Angeles, 738 F.3d 1058,
1064 (9th Cir. 2013) (en banc).
Given its defects, this Court should find the
warrantless search scheme a violation of the Fourth
Amendment. Perfection should not be required of
every statute affecting Fourth Amendment interests,
but the warrantless search scheme seizes innocent
parties, coercing them into law enforcement’s
information-gathering role, and authorizes searching
of their papers that violates the Fourth Amendment
in just about every way.
There is an argument that the statute may fit
within the “administrative search doctrine,” a gloss
on the Fourth Amendment’s reasonableness
requirement that dispenses with warrants in a
narrow band of cases. But “administrative search”
ultimately does not save this scheme.

 18
B. The “Administrative Search Doctrine” Is
Not Properly Applied to Hoteliers in This
Circumstance
The “administrative search doctrine” is a
fascinating area of law. As articulated in New York v.
Burger, 482 U.S. 691 (1987), this three-part test for
escaping the Fourth Amendment’s warrant
requirement is a four-part test first requiring a
“closely regulated” industry. If that exists, there
must be a regulatory scheme that advances a
“substantial” government interest, warrantless
inspections that further the regulatory scheme, and
“a constitutionally adequate substitute for a
warrant.” Id. at 702-03.
The cases always seem to turn on whether there
is a “closely regulated” industry. As the doctrine
would have it do, the petitioner’s brief seeks to
satisfy this most important prong of the test by
listing examples that suggest hotels are pervasively
regulated. Pet. Brief at 33.
The test, the application of it, or both are slightly
comical, because the argument goes like this: Given
the requirement that hotels must thoroughly wash
multi-use ice buckets and put them in a sanitized
bag, Pet. Brief at 34, hotels can be required to turn
over business records on demand of any Los Angeles
police officer. That is some syllogism.
The reason why this logic actually fails is that
there is a premise to the “administrative search
doctrine” that is rarely observed but essential to
recognize: in administrative search cases, there is a
close connection between the source of the problem
that the regulation addresses and the entity subject
to search. When that unity does not exist, as here,

 19
applying the doctrine would not lead to a reasonable,
constitutional result.
The Burger case dealt with administrative
searches of automobile junkyards. Fittingly, the
Burger Court noted the finding of New York
regulators at the time of the inspection law’s
adoption that “[a]utomobile junkyards and vehicle
dismantlers provide the major market for stolen
vehicles and vehicle parts.” 482 U.S. at 709. This is
the essential reason why it may be reasonable to
subject junkyards and dismantlers to warrantless
administrative inspection. Possession of stolen cars
and car parts is a risk that inheres in their very line
of business.
Operation of hotels may have proximity to
prostitution, drug dealing, and other crimes, but
being in the hotel business does not produce a
proclivity toward those illegal acts among hoteliers
themselves. (This is true despite rare examples of
hotel owners getting involved in crime.) The
warrantless search scheme is not aimed at thwarting
crimes on the part of hoteliers. It requires them to
gather information that may be evidence to the
crimes of others. This is no part of the
“administrative search doctrine.” It is unreasonable
and unconstitutional.
C. The California Bankers Case Did Not
Approve a Scheme Like the Warrantless
Search
Scheme
Against
Fourth
Amendment Challenge
This Court’s ruling in California Bankers does not
dispose of the warrantless search scheme under the
Fourth Amendment. That case dealt with many
things: arguments proffered by various parties with

 20
respect to various parts of the Bank Secrecy Act.
Primarily, the case addressed the Due Process claims
of banks against the record-keeping provisions of the
Bank Secrecy Act’s Title I. Cal. Bankers Ass’n, 416
U.S. at 45-51.
In its brief assessment of recordkeeping banks’
Fourth Amendment claims, the Court found no issue
because “[n]either the provisions of Title I nor the
implementing
regulations
require
that
any
information contained in the records be disclosed to
the Government; both the legislative history and the
regulations make specific reference to the fact that
access to the records is to be controlled by existing
legal process.” Id. at 52. This is the exact opposite of
what pertains in Los Angeles’s warrantless search
scheme, which allows government agents to search
hoteliers’ records on demand, without legal process,
and subject to no judicial oversight or review.
In its Due Process analysis, the bulk of the
precedents the majority cited were recordkeeping
requirements with the primary purpose of regulating
the record-keepers themselves. Id. at 46 (citing
Shapiro v. United States, 335 U.S. 1 (1948), and
United States v. Darby, 312 U.S. 100 (1941)). In one
area, the Court found a consistent practice of recordkeeping and reporting with the purpose of supporting
law enforcement against others. That was in the area
of taxation, where the (still growing) practice is for
payers to file information returns that assist the
government in monitoring payees. Id. at 47. The
Court did not cite any case upholding the
constitutionality of this practice against a Fourth
Amendment challenge.

 21
California Bankers was a 6-3 decision, with
Justice Powell, joined by Justice Blackmun, sounding
cautionary notes in a concurring opinion. Id. at 7880. In his dissent, Justice Douglas decried the
innovation in requiring private parties to gather
information about each other for the government:
Heretofore
this
nation
has
confined
compulsory recordkeeping to that required to
monitor either (1) the recordkeeper, or (2) his
business. Marchetti v. United States, 390 U.S.
39, and United States v. Darby, 312 U.S. 100,
are illustrative. Even then, as Mr. Justice
Harlan writing for the Court said, they must
be records that would “customarily” be kept,
have a “public” rather than a private purpose,
and arise out of an “‘essentially noncriminal
and regulatory area of inquiry.’” Marchetti v.
United States, supra, at 57.
Id. at 86 (Douglas, J., dissenting)
Justice Marshall’s dissent presciently objected to
the Court’s bifurcated treatment of mandatory
recordkeeping and reporting to the government.
There was no allegation that bank-collected records
has been turned over to the government, so the Court
declared individuals’ claims against the scheme
unripe. To Justice Marshall, this was “a hollow
charade whereby Fourth Amendment claims are to
be labeled premature until such time as they can be
deemed too late.” Id. at 97 (Marshall, J., dissenting).
Sure enough, in United States v. Miller two years
later, 425 U.S. 435 (1976), the Court used the evermisapplied “reasonable expectation of privacy” test to
find that customers of financial services do not have
a Fourth Amendment interest in details of their

 22
financial lives because they have revealed them to
financial services providers. Id. at 443-444.4
This confused and controversial pair of cases gave
unsteady birth to a doctrine holding that individuals
have no Fourth Amendment interest in information
they relinquish to third-parties, even under fiduciary
confidentiality and contractual privacy obligations. It
prompted one member of this Court, concurring
recently in Jones, to suggest more careful work in
this area:
[I]t may be necessary to reconsider the
premise that an individual has no reasonable
expectation of privacy in information
voluntarily disclosed to third parties. E.g.,
Smith, 442 U. S., at 742; United States v.
Miller, 425 U. S. 435, 443 (1976). This
approach is ill suited to the digital age, in
which people reveal a great deal of information
about themselves to third parties in the course
of carrying out mundane tasks. People disclose
the phone numbers that they dial or text to
their cellular providers; the URLs that they
visit and the e-mail addresses with which they
correspond to their Internet service providers;
and the books, groceries, and medications they
purchase to online retailers.
Jones, 132 S. Ct. at 957 (Sotomayor, J., concurring).
California Bankers did not approve a scheme like
the warrantless search scheme at issue in this case
against a Fourth Amendment challenge. It did set in
motion a line of decisions that have had uneven and
Customers of Los Angeles hotels are not present in this
case, so Miller has no bearing here.
4

 23
regrettable results given consensus in this Court that
it should “assur[e] preservation of that degree of
privacy against government that existed when the
Fourth Amendment was adopted.” Kyllo, 533 U.S. at
34; Jones, 132 S. Ct. at 950 (majority opinion); id. at
958 (Alito, J., concurring in the judgment).
The Los Angeles warrantless search scheme
provides this Court an opportunity to continue
improving Fourth Amendment doctrine. Recognize
that the statute authorizes seizures and searches.
Affirm that it is indeed “papers” being searched. And
find, consistent with strong and long-lasting
precedent, that such searches require probable cause
and a warrant.
CONCLUSION
In 1946, Justice Murphy dissented in Okla. Press
Publishing Co. v. Walling, 327 U.S. 186, which
approved
non-judicial
subpoenas
issued
by
administrative agents. “Excessive use or abuse of
authority,” he argued, “can not only destroy man’s
instinct for liberty but will eventually undo the
administrative processes themselves. Our history is
not without a precedent of a successful revolt against
a ruler who ‘sent hither swarms of officers to harass
our people.’” Id. at 218 (Murphy, J., dissenting).
There is no second American revolution brewing
among innkeepers in Los Angeles, but the conditions
they suffer—some of them new Americans—are too
akin in this respect to the plight of colonists under
King George: the warrantless search scheme denies
them dominion over themselves, their property, and
their papers. These are things the American
revolutionaries fought to make their right.

 24
“A people’s desire to cooperate with the
enforcement of a statute is in direct proportion to the
respect for individual rights shown in the
enforcement process,” Justice Murphy said. “Liberty
is too priceless to be forfeited through the zeal of an
administrative agent.” Id. at 219.
The vast majority of hoteliers want nothing more
than peaceable operation of their small businesses.
They would undoubtedly cooperate with law
enforcement fully if they were accorded their full
rights. The warrantless search scheme must fall in
order to reset the rule of law in Los Angeles. Doing so
will restore constitutional order and once again make
hoteliers partners in defense of the social order.
The Ninth Circuit’s judgment should be affirmed.
Respectfully submitted,
JIM HARPER
Counsel of Record
ILYA SHAPIRO
JULIO COLOMBA
CATO INSTITUTE
1000 Mass. Ave., N.W.
Washington, DC 20001
(202) 842-0200
jharper@cato.org
January 30, 2015