By Tanya K Metaksa
Special to TheGunMag.com
The US Supreme Court (SCOTUS) ruled unanimously on Caniglia v. Strom on May 17 in favor of the plaintiff Edward Caniglia whose firearms had been seized by the police after he consented to go for a psychiatric evaluation and leave the premises.
“Caniglia agreed to go to the hospital for a psychiatric evaluation on the condition that the officers not confiscate his firearms. But once Caniglia left, the officers located and seized his weapons. Caniglia sued, claiming that the officers had entered his home and seized him and his firearms without a warrant in violation of the Fourth Amendment.”
Mr. Caniglia filed a lawsuit that alleged the seizure of his firearms was a violation of both his Fourth and Second Amendment rights. The district court ruled in favor of the police and his subsequent appeal to the First Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the ruling of the district court.
Neither court even mentioned Caniglia’s Second Amendment claims as they were solely focused on the question of his Fourth Amendment claim. The First Circuit specifically cited the SCOTUS opinion in the case Cady v. Dombrowskii. In the “Cady” case the search without a warrant applied to an abandoned vehicle, not a person’s home. But in “Caniglia” the First Circuit expanded the SCOTUS decision to include the removal of both Caniglia and his firearms from Caniglia’s home as allowable under the officer’s “community caretaking exemption”. Thus they opined that seeking a warrant was not necessary.
The Fourth Amendment, which prohibits governments from entering peoples’ homes without a warrant, has been minimized over the years. Courts, over time, have allowed a weakening of Fourth Amendment rights. The SCOTUS opinion in this case has pushed back hard on that erosion of rights.
Justice Clarence Thomas’ unanimous opinion held that “Neither the holding nor logic of Cady justifies such warrantless searches and seizures in the home…The very core of the Fourth Amendment’s guarantee is the right of a person to retreat into his or her home and ‘there be free from unreasonable governmental intrusion.’ A recognition of the existence of ‘community caretaking’ tasks, like rendering aid to motorists in disabled vehicles, is not an open-ended license to perform them anywhere.”
Thomas went on to explain the difference between vehicles and homes: “What is reasonable for vehicles is different from what is reasonable for homes. Cady acknowledged as much, and this Court has repeatedly ‘declined to expand the scope of . . . exceptions to the warrant requirement to permit warrantless entry into the home.’”
For the past several years we have seen “red flag” laws become one of the most favorite proposals of the gun control crowd. These laws at the state level have been getting more and more onerous. The list of persons who have the right to propose the implementation of governmental seizure of firearms without warrants and the reasons for seizure keep growing. Hopefully, Caniglia v. Strom institutes a legal barrier to the expansion red flag laws. Thus stopping the seizure of firearms from honest citizens.
This unanimous opinion of the sanctity of the “home” under the Fourth Amendment will, hopefully, become the barrier that stops the seizing firearms from innocent citizens without a warrant under these “red flag” laws being passed in the various states.
