Megan's Law home visits do not violate Fourth Amendment

The Court of Appeals has ruled that the County of Suffolk may legally authorize a private entity to visit the private homes of registered sex offenders without a warrant in order to verify their addresses. In doing so, the Court applies the "special needs" exception to the Fourth Amendment.

The case is Jones v. County of Suffolk, issued on September 4. Megan's Law was enacted in the 1990s to require that sex offenders register their addresses with the government. They also have to update the government if they change their addresses. This allows members of the community to know if any offenders are living in the neighborhood. Jones brought this lawsuit challenging these warrantless visits under the Fourth Amendment.

The Court of Appeals (Droney, Raggi and Cabranes) upholds the program. The Fourth Amendment is vague on its face, stating only that the government cannot undertake unreasonable searches and seizures. What is "unreasonable?" The answer to that question lies with the judges who interpret the Constitution. The Supreme Court has handed down reams of case law over the years on that question. One line of cases says the government can conduct a warrantless search under the "special needs doctrine," which says the search is legal if the government has a "substantial" interest such that the Fourth Amendment's "individual suspicion" requirement need not apply. The warrantless search is also legal under the "special needs doctrine" if the government's objective is "distinct from the ordinary evidence gathering associated with crime investigation." Cases uphold searches under this doctrine are rare.

But this is one of those cases that uphold the search under the "special needs doctrine." While the plaintiff argues that these searches are improperly intended to find incriminating information, the Court of Appeals disagrees. The County says that, despite thousands of home visits, the searches have only resulted in a handful of arrests of sex offenders who did not register the correct address. "The record does not support an immediate objective of the program was 'ordinary evidence gathering associated with crime investigation.'" In addition, the information transmitted by the private groups who conduct these searches did not constitute per se evidence of a crime. The Court concludes, "the program advances the government's substantial interest in reducing sex offender recidivism by improving the accuracy of the registry. Thus, the program serves a special need 'beyond the normal need for law enforcement.'"