by TChris

As a general rule, the police can't enter your home without your consent or a warrant. But what about your garage?

In a minor victory for the Fourth Amendment and for the right to privacy (a victory fairly characterized as a "no-brainer"), the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled that a police officer had no right to stick his foot under a closing garage door, causing the garage door to raise so that he could talk to the driver who had just driven into the garage. The officer hadn't seen the driver engage in any bad driving (and thus couldn't claim he was in "hot pursuit" of the driver), but wanted to talk to the driver about a report that he'd been seen weaving while driving home. The driver closed the garage door without realizing that the officer was standing at the threshhold.

The decision addressed constitutional issues of appropriate search and seizure and determined that a person's right to privacy extends to his garage "because it is not impliedly open to the public."

Sadly, this isn't going to deter the Farmington Police Department from doing the same thing in the future. Chief Dan Siebenaler says he "respects" the court's decision but he doesn't think the officer did anything wrong and he doesn't intend to change the department's policy. Saying "never mind the courts, we'll do what we wanna do" doesn't seem particularly respectful either of the courts or of the Constitution.