The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday will hear the oral argument in Caniglia v. Storm, a case that has potentially sweeping consequences for policing, due process, gun rights and mental health.
Biden is urging the High Court to uphold warrantless gun confiscation, which began as a case involving a spat between a couple, and is now a major Fourth Amendment case.
The story dates back to August 2015 when Edward Caniglia and his wife Kim got into a quarrel over a joke Edward made regarding his brother-in-law. The spat turns into an hours long tiff that ended with police unlawfully seizing Edwards guns while officers took him for a mental health check.
When the officers seized his guns they didn’t claim it was an energy or to prevent imminent danger, instead, they argued their actions were a form of “community caretaking.” This claim is a very narrow exception to the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement.
Now, Biden is calling on the Senate to approve two bills passed by the House of Representatives on March 11 that would broaden background checks on gun buyers and ban assault-style weapons.
“I don’t need to wait another minute – let alone an hour – to take common-sense steps that will save the lives in the future, and I urge my colleagues in the House and Senate to act,” Biden said at the White House on Tuesday.
Will these actions save lives? This is debatable as gun-owning citizens are among the most law abiding citizens in the country. Unregistered, stolen and black market guns are the vast-majority used in crimes.
Biden’s statements and actions come after both a district and appellate court upheld the seizures as “reasonable” under the community caretaking exception.
The First Circuit sided with law enforcement on the above case citing a police officer “must act as a master of all emergencies, who is ‘expected to… provide an infinite variety of services to preserve and protect community safety.’”
While the Fourth Amendment exception is “ill-defined,” the court has extended the doctrine outside of the vehicles context to cover private homes as well.
In their opening brief for the Supreme Court, attorneys for Caniglia warned that “extending the community caretaking exception to homes would be anathema to the Fourth Amendment” because it “would grant police a blank check to intrude upon the home.”
Sadly, this fear is not unwarranted. The jurisdictions that have extended this community caretaking exception to homes, “everything from loud music to leaky pipes have been used to justify warrantless invasion of the home.” This comes from a joint amicus brief by the ACLU, the Cato Institute, and the American Conservative Union.
It’s also obvious if this expansion holds, it could have staggering affects on people calling for help when it’s needed. As the brief stated, “When every interaction with police or request for help can become an invitation for police to invade the home, the willingness of individuals to seek assistance when it is most needed will suffer.”
The Biden Administration is calling on the justices to uphold the First Circuit’s ruling stating “reasonableness” of the Fourth Amendment is the ultimate touchstone. However, who is the one to decide the reasonableness?
“The ultimate question in this case is therefore not whether the respondent officers’ actions fit within some narrow warrant exception,” their brief stated, “but instead whether those actions were reasonable,” actions the Justice Department felt were “justified” in Caniglia’s case.
If upheld this exception would greatly undermine the ability for people to secure their homes and live without an arbitrary, looming threat of unwarranted home invasion and seizure of their fire arms.
“The Fourth Amendment protects our right to be secure in our property, which means the right to be free from fear that the police will enter your house without warning or authorization,” said Institute for Justice Attorney Joshua Windham. “A rule that allows police to burst into your home without a warrant whenever they feel they are acting as ‘community caretakers’ is a threat to everyone’s security.”
