THE FOURTH AMENDMENT SUFFERS AT COURT'S HANDS

Rulings Threaten Civil Liberties.

Step into a car and you leave your Fourth Amendment rights behind. Or
so says the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Fourth Amendment protects citizens from unreasonable search and
seizure, but the court has been dismantling it bit by bit. This week,
the justices ruled 6-3 that a police officer who stops a car may
rummage through a passenger's personal belongings - without a search
warrant - because he suspects the driver may have done something wrong.

"Passengers, no less than drivers, possess a reduced expectation of
privacy with regard to the property that they transport in cars, which
travel public thoroughfares," wrote Justice Antonin Scalia.

Nonsense. It makes no difference where you are, the police must show
good cause before they search your home, your car, your handbag or
pockets. That fundamental right is guaranteed by the Constitution and
safeguarded by the magistrate - the official appointed to stand as a
disinterested party between police and the privacy of citizens. It's
the magistrate who grants warrants for searches.

In their crusade against crime, particularly the drug trade,
politicians and police have tried repeatedly to short-circuit that
safeguard. Time after time, the courts have gone along, giving police
more and more leeway to root through cars and search innocent people
without cause.

The Supreme Court hasn't scrapped the Fourth Amendment entirely. At
least not yet. Last December, the justices found against an Iowa
police officer who stopped a car for a routine traffic violation and
then searched it without warrant or suspicion, just to see if he might
find something illegal.

In other cases, however, the Supreme Court has been all too willing to
put the convenience of law enforcement ahead of the rights of citizens.

The case this week began in Wyoming, after a trooper stopped a car
with a bad brake light. The trooper noticed a syringe in the pocket of
the driver, David Young. When asked about it, Young admitted he had
used the syringe to take drugs.

The trooper searched the car, and in the process, he rifled through
the purse of a passenger, Sandra Houghton. He found
methamphetamine.

Houghton was wrong to have the drugs. The trooper, however, had no
cause to search her or her purse. He had no reason to suspect she had
done anything wrong, other than the fact that she was riding with Young.

No one's defending drug users or criminals. It's the larger principle
that's important here. Though it may be expedient for police to
bypass the magistrate and search people without a warrant, it's
wrong. It makes law officers their own judge and threatens our right
as Americans to be left alone in our homes, our cars and our persons.
Where will it end? Random pat-downs on street corners?

Law officers need to get a warrant, then do their search. That's
hardly a burden, especially these days, when computers have made
communication faster and easier than ever. It may all look like
useless paperwork to politicians and crime-weary citizens, but it's
there to protect the rights of everyone - the innocent as well as the
guilty.