US Supreme Court upholds Hotel's Right to Protect the Privacy of its Guests [Read the Judgment]

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Monday that a Los Angeles ordinance that required hotel operators to record and keep specific information about their guests on the premises for a 90-day period which were to be made available to any officer of the Los Angeles Police Department for inspection without warrant, failing which the hotel operator’s failure to make the records available was to be treated as a criminal misdemeanor violates the privacy rights of business owners.The respondent-hotel owners 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 ordinance requires hotel and motel operators to collect a detailed list of information on each guest, including name and address, car model, license plate number and method of payment.The records were to be made available for inspection by the police department at any time, without a warrant.The questions presented for consideration before the Court were 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.(A facial challenge is an attack on a statute itself as opposed to a particular application. To obtain facial relief the party seeking it must establish that no set of circumstances exists under which the statute would be valid)The Court by a majority of 5 to 4 answered the issue holding that facial challenges can be brought under the Fourth Amendment, and 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.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) of the Municipal Code. They sought declaratory and injunctive relief. The parties “agree[d] that the ole issue in the . . . action [would be] a facial constitutional challenge” to §41.49(3)(a) under the Fourth Amendment. They further stipulated that respondents have been subjected to mandatory record inspections under the ordinance without consent or a warrant. 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. 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 (1984), and See v. Seattle, 387 U. S. 541 (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).Los Angeles appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court after the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the ordinance in December 2013.The City principally contended that facial challenges to statutes authorizing warrantless searches must fail because such searches will never be unconstitutional in all applications. In particular, the City points to situations where police are responding to an emergency, where the subject of the search consents to the intrusion, and where police are acting under a court-ordered warrant. The city called the law crucial to efforts to reduce criminal activity, especially in so-called parking meter motels that charge by the hour and are often used for prostitution and other crimes.Justice Sonia Sotomayor considering whether §41.49 falls within the administrative search exception to the warrant requirement, said for the majority : “The Court has held that absent consent, exigent circumstances, or the like, in order for an administrative search to be constitutional, the subject of the search must be afforded an opportunity to obtain pre compliance review before a neutral...

US Supreme Court upholds Hotel's Right to Protect the Privacy of its Guests [Read the Judgment]

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