Atwater v. City of Lago Vista - Opinion Announcement

Argument of Speaker

Mr. Speaker: The opinion of the Court in No. 99-1408, Atwater verus the City of Lago Vista will be announced by Justice Souter.

Argument of Justice Souter

Mr. Souter: This case comes to us on writ of certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.

Texas state law makes it a misdemeanor, punishable only by a fine, for a front-seat passenger in a car equipped with seatbelts to fail to wear a seatbelt or for the driver of such a car to fail to secure any small child riding in front.

Texas law further authorizes the warrantless arrest for anyone found violating the seatbelt provisions, although it permits police to issue citations in lieu of arrest.

In March of 1997, a Lago Vista police officer stopped the petitioner Gail Atwater for violating the seatbelt law.

After upbraiding Atwater, the officer arrested and handcuffed her, placed her in his squad car, and transported her to the police station, where she was made to remove her shoes and jewelry and eyeglasses and empty her pockets.

Booking officers then took Atwater’s "mug shot" and placed her in a jail cell for approximately one hour at which time she was released on bond.

After pleading guilty to the seatbelt misdemeanor and paying the $50 fine, Atwater and her husband filed suit alleging that the officer’s actions violated her Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable seizure.

The District Court rejected Atwater’s claim and granted summary judgment for the City and the officer and the Fifth Circuit sitting en banc affirmed.

In an opinion filed today with the Clerk of Court, we affirm and hold that the Fourth amendment does not forbid police to make warrantless arrest for minor criminal offenses like the seatbelt misdemeanor in issue here.

Initially and we think significantly, there is no historical basis for such a limitation.

In the years leading up to this nation’s founding for example, Parliament repeatedly authorized police officers to make warrantless arrest for misdemeanor-level offenses.

The relevant American evidences to the same effect, neither the history of the framing, nor subsequent legal developments, indicate that the Fourth Amendment was originally understood or has traditionally been read to forbid warrantless misdemeanor arrests.

On the contrary for more than 200 years now, legislatures have conferred warrantless misdemeanor arrest power and courts have sustained that authority against constitutional challenge.

We will not depart from that tradition today.

Further we refuse Atwater’s request and mandate a new rule of constitutional law forbidding custodial arrest when conviction could not ultimately carry any jail time and the government shows no compelling need for immediate detention.

For reasons more fully explained in our opinion, we believe that a standard requiring sensitive case-by-case determinations of government need, would be difficult, if not outright impossible for officers in the field to administer and would result probably in a crush of Fourth Amendment litigation.

We simply are not convinced that there is a sufficiently serious problem of police abusing their minor offense arrest authority to justify the development of a new and distinct body of Fourth Amendment jurisprudence.

Isolated incidents can and should be dealt with through the normal political processes.

Justice O’Connor has filed a dissenting opinion in which Justices Stevens, Ginsburg and Breyer joined.