Short Circuit 419 | Inspecting Your Business

We welcome on Sam MacRoberts of the Kansas Justice Institute for an inspection of the Fourth Amendment. Sam is the General Counsel and Litigation Director of KJI where he does things like sue the government. So he’s a perfect fit for Short Circuit. Sam tells us of a case he recently litigated about how his state’s inspection laws went to the dogs. Specifically, clients of his who ran a very small dog training business at their home and had to deal with abrupt, last-minute inspections where the state said it did not need to get a warrant. But Sam thought the Fourth Amendment seems to indicate it did. So the case went to the Tenth Circuit, which ruled Sam was right. The opinion digs into a judge-created exception to the warrant requirement concerning “closely regulated” businesses. What’s a “closely regulated business”? Sam tries to help us answer. As does Daniel Woislaw of IJ, who discusses our second case, a recent one from the Sixth Circuit, about what happens when the closely regulated exception is used in a criminal investigation. An employee of a bar in Michigan drank on the job and later was arrested for a DUI. The police investigated the bar itself and tried conducting a search as a part of the criminal investigation under the cover of a regulatory inspection. The court said you can’t use the easy search when you’re actually trying to do the hard one. Both cases and both guests give us a hard look into this frustratingly complicated area of constitutional law. Plus, at the end, we play a little “where are they now” and learn what’s happened to some cases of Short Circuits past.

Johnson v. Smith

Generis Entertainment v. Donley

Kansas Justice Institute