WHEN A HOME IS NOT A CASTLE

Under the 4th Amendment, which guarantees the right of all Americans
"to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects," someone
sitting in her living room may not be subjected to an unreasonable
search and seizure. But what if that same person is sitting in someone
else's living room? Then she's fair game.

That's the meaning of last week's Supreme Court decision in a
Minnesota case. A police officer, acting on a tip, peered in through
the blinds of a ground-floor apartment to see three people putting
cocaine in plastic bags. When two of them left, police stopped their
car and found the illicit cargo.

During their trial, the defendants argued unsuccessfully that the
officer's peeking violated the 4th Amendment. But the Minnesota
Supreme Court agreed that even though they were guests and not
residents in the apartment, they had a right to privacy there--and
that when the cop looked in on them, he conducted an illegal search.

Last week, though, the U.S. Supreme Court disagreed. Writing for the
majority, Chief Justice William Rehnquist noted that the court had
previously said that overnight guests in a home are entitled to the
same 4th Amendment rights as the people who live there. But since the
two men here had never visited the dwelling before, spent only 2 1/2
hours there and were present purely for a business purpose (packaging
cocaine), he concluded that they deserved no such deference.

This argument is strained, to say the least. The court insisted that
overnight guests are different because "we are at our most vulnerable
when we are asleep." But some overnight guests don't ever actually
sleep. And does the 4th Amendment suddenly kick in for a daytime
visitor who dozes off on the couch?

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had no patience with such hair-splitting.
She took the level-headed view that when a homeowner "personally
invites a guest into her home to share in a common endeavor, whether
it be for conversation, to engage in leisure activities, or for
business purposes licit or illicit, that guest should share his host's
shelter against unreasonable searches and seizures."

The Constitution, she reminded her colleagues, was meant to protect
people, not places. By putting most guests outside the protection of
the 4th Amendment, the court has shrunk the privacy of every American.

Checked-by: Patrick Henry