It has been less than eight months since John Roberts replaced William H. Rehnquist as chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. Based on his early opinions, Roberts is unlikely to disappoint those who backed his nomination.
Like Rehnquist and other conservative members of the high court, Roberts is not one to mince words or dance around a topic. His directness and his wit were first put on prominent display back in March when he wrote for a unanimous court in a case involving the obligation of a law school to provide access to military recruiters.
In that decision, he dismissed the free speech claims of the law schools and their faculties that they had a right to bar recruiters because they disapproved of the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy on homosexuality. That opinion, parts of which are aimed directly at the faculties of elite law schools, reads like a stern lecture to misguided schoolchildren.
Roberts has since followed up with a dissent in a case that questioned whether police, called to a domestic disturbance, have a right to enter a home when one of the parties to the dispute denies permission. The majority ruled against the police. In that dissent, Roberts recites prior case law on warrantless searches and criticizes the majority for ignoring those decisions while creating an arbitrary rule that may ultimately cause great harm in future domestic disturbance cases.
A warrantless search and the rights of police officers also figured in a case decided Monday by the high court. This time, Roberts wrote for a unanimous court in the case that had been kicking around the courts for six years.
In July 2000, police in Brigham City, Utah, were called to a loud party. They heard shouting from inside, walked down a driveway and found two juveniles drinking beer. Then, through a screen door, they saw a fight in the kitchen. One adult was punched in the face; police saw him spit blood into a sink. Other adults then tried to subdue a juvenile up against a refrigerator.
At this point, a police officer opened the kitchen door but no one seemed to notice. He called out, entered the home and eventually made arrests.
The issue for the Supreme Court was whether the police actions violated the search standards of the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Lower courts in Utah and the Utah Supreme Court ruled the search unlawful.
Roberts’ opinion held that police may enter a home without a warrant when they have an objectively reasonable basis for believing that an occupant is seriously injured or imminently threatened with injury.
The chief justice dismissed the argument of the respondents: that officers were not truly interested in aiding those who might have been injured, but rather were mostly concerned about making arrests. Roberts, citing earlier federal cases, said the subjective motives of the police don’t matter. What does matter is whether their actions, viewed objectively, are reasonable.
Also rejected was the argument that the punch in the face that attracted the officers’ attention wasn’t serious enough to have justified the police decision to enter the house.
Roberts argued that the officers had an objectively reasonable basis for believing that the injured adult might need help and that the violence in the kitchen was just beginning. Nothing in the Fourth Amendment required them to wait until another blow rendered someone “unconscious” or “semi-conscious,” or worse, before entering.
On one level, the decision seems to reflect simple common sense, but what makes it so refreshing is that it comes from a new chief justice and (wonder of wonders) a unanimous Supreme Court. It may not signal a new era, but it certainly signals a welcome change.
Al Knight of Fairplay (alknight@mindspring.com) is a former member of The Post’s editorial-page staff. His column appears on Wednesdays.
