No. 99-1030 

In the Supreme Court of the United States 

CITY OF INDIANAPOLIS, ET AL., PETITIONERS 

v. 

JAMES EDMOND, ET AL. 

ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI 
TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS 
FOR THE SEVENTH CIRCUIT 

BRIEF FOR THE UNITED STATES 
AS AMICUS CURIAE SUPPORTING PETITIONERS 

SETH P. WAXMAN 

Solicitor General 

Counsel of Record 

JAMES K. ROBINSON 

Assistant Attorney General 

MICHAEL R. DREEBEN 

Deputy Solicitor General 

PATRICIA A. MILLETT 

Assistant to the Solicitor 

General 

KARIN B. HOPPMANN 
MICHAEL A. ROTKER 

Attorneys 

Department of Justice 
Washington, D. C. 20530-0001 
(202) 514-2217 

QUESTION PRESENTED 

Whether checkpoints at which law enforcement 
officers briefly stop vehicular traffic, check motorists’ 
licenses and vehicle registrations, look for signs of im- 
pairment, and walk a “narcotics detection” dog around 
the exterior of each stopped automobile violate the 
Fourth Amendment. 

(I) 

TABLE OF CONTENTS 

Page 

Interest of the United States ...................................................... 
1 

Statement ........................................................................................ 2 

Summary of argument .................................................................. 
6 

Argument: 

Vehicle checkpoints that serve governmental in- 
terests in drug-detection and license-and-registra- 
tion inspection are reasonable seizures under the 

Fourth Amendment ............................................................... 

8 

A. The Fourth Amendment permits vehicle check- 
points where the government interests served 

justify the intrustion ...................................................... 

8 

B. A vehicle checkpoint may validly be established 

to serve the government’s interests both in drug 

detection and motor vehicle regulation ...................... 

11 

1. The interests served by the checkpoints are 

substantial ................................................................ 11 

2. The intrusion on liberty and privacy is 

minimal ...................................................................... 15 

3. The checkpoints are highly effective ................... 

17 

C. The court of appeals erred in holding that the 

checkpoint program in this case is invalid be- 
cause it serves law enforcement interests ................. 

18 

D. The checkpoint in this case is valid because it is 

objectively justified by its secondary purpose 

to check driver’s licenses and registrations ............... 

22 

Conclusion ....................................................................................... 30 

(III) 

IV 

TABLE OF AUTHORITIES 

Cases: 

Bond v. United States, 120 S. Ct. 1462 (2000) ............. 

21, 25 

Brower v. County of Inyo, 489 U.S. 593 (1989) ................ 

25 

Brown v. Texas, 443 U.S. 47 (1979) ................... 

10, 19, 26, 29 

California v. Ciraolo, 476 U.S. 207 (1986) ........................ 

14 

Camara v. Municipal Court, 387 U.S. 523 (1967) ........... 

29 

Cardwell v. Lewis, 417 U.S. 583 (1974) .............................. 

9 

Chandler v. Miller, 520 U.S. 305 1997) .............................. 

25 

Colorado v. Bertine, 479 U.S. 367 (1987) ........................... 

29 

Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403 U.S. 443 (1971) ............ 

30 

Delaware v. Prouse, 440 U.S. 648 (1979) ............ 

8, 14, 19, 29 

Florida v. Royer, 460 U.S. 491 (1983) ................................ 

13 

Graham v. Connor, 490 U.S. 386 (1989) ............................ 

25 

Horton v. California, 496 U.S. 128 (1990) ........ 

23, 26, 27, 30 

LaFontaine v. State, 497 S.E.2d 367 (Ga.), cert. 

denied, 525 U.S. 947 (1998) ................................................... 

14 

Marshall v. Barlow’s, Inc., 436 U.S. 307 (1978) ............. 

9, 29 

Maryland v. Wilson, 519 U.S. 408 (1997) .......................... 

8 

Massachusetts v. Painten, 389 U.S. 560 (1968) ................ 

24 

Merrett v. Moore, 58 F.3d 1547 (11th Cir. 1995), 

cert. denied, 519 U.S. 812 (1996) ..................................... 

14, 23 

Michigan Dep’t of State Police v. Sitz, 496 U.S. 

444 (1990) ..................................................................... 

passim 

National Treasury Employees Union v. Von Raab, 

489 U.S. 656 (1989) ............................................................. 

11, 13 

New Jersey v. T.L.O., 469 U.S. 325 (1985) ......................... 

8 

New York v. Burger, 482 U.S. 691 (1987) .......................... 

29 

New York v. Class, 475 U.S. 106 (1986) ........................... 

9, 14 

Ohio v. Robinette, 519 U.S. 33 (1996) ................................. 

25 

Park v. Forest Serv., 205 F.3d 1034 (8th Cir. 

2000) ......................................................................................... 14 

Pennsylvania v. Labron, 518 U.S. 938 (1996) ................... 

9 

Scott v. United States, 436 U.S. 128 (1978) ...................... 

24-25 

Skinner v. Railway Labor Exec. Ass’n, 489 U.S. 

602 (1989) ................................................................................. 

21 

South Dakota v. Opperman, 428 U.S. 364 (1976) ............. 8-9 

V 

Cases—Continued: Page 

State v. Damask, 936 S.W.2d 565 (Mo. 1996) .................... 

13 

State v. Larson, 485 N.W.2d 571 (Minn. Ct. App. 

1992) ......................................................................................... 15 

State v. Rodriguez, 877 S.W.2d 106 (Mo. 1994) ................. 

14 

Texas v. Brown, 460 U.S. 730 (1983) .................................. 

29 

United States v. Brignoni-Ponce, 422 U.S. 873 

(1975) ........................................................................................ 29 

United States v. Martinez-Fuerte, 428 U.S. 543 

(1976) ................................................................................ passim 

United States v. McFayden, 865 F.2d 1306 (D.C. 

Cir. 1989) .................................................................................. 

14 

United States v. Mendenhall, 446 U.S. 544 (1980) ........... 

13 

United States v. Montoya de Hernandez, 473 U.S. 

531 (1985) ............................................................................. 

11, 20 

United States v. Morales-Zamora, 914 F.2d 200 

(10th Cir. 1990) ....................................................................... 

14 

United States v. Ortiz, 422 U.S. 891 (1975) ....................... 

21 

United States v. Place, 462 U.S. 696 (1983) ................... 

11, 15 

United States v. Prichard, 645 F.2d 854 (10th Cir.), 

cert. denied, 454 U.S. 832 (1981) ......................................... 

14 

United States v. Ramsey, 431 U.S. 606 (1977) .............. 

20 

United States v. Robinson, 414 U.S. 218 (1973) ........... 

25, 26 

Unites States v. Sharpe, 470 U.S. 675 (1985) .................. 

28-29 

United States v. Trevino, 60 F.3d 333 (7th Cir. 

1995), cert. denied, 516 U.S. 1061 (1996) ............................ 

14 

United States v. Villamonte-Marquez, 462 U.S. 
579 (1983) ............................................................................. 
23, 26 

Vernonia Sch. Dist. v. Acton, 515 U.S. 646 
(1995) ........................................................................................ 8 

Whren v. United States, 517 U.S. 806 (1996) ................ 

24, 25, 

27, 28 
Wyoming v. Houghton, 526 U.S. 295 (1999) .................... 9, 21 

VI 

Constitution and statutes: 

Page 

U.S. Const.: 

Amend. IV ....................................................................... 

passim 

Amend. XIV ............................................................................ 
3 

42 U.S.C. 1983 ............................................................................ 
3 

Ind. Code Ann. (Michie 1997): 
§ 9-18-2-21(b)(2) .................................................................... 15 

§ 9-24-13-3 .............................................................................. 15 

Miscellaneous: 

Federal Highway Admin., Traffic Control Devices 

Handbook (1983) .................................................................... 
16 

Forest Service Handbook 5309.11, Sec. 360 (Sept. 
1998) ......................................................................................... 2 

Memorandum of Understanding Between the Drug 

Enforcement Administration and the Immigration 
and Naturalization Service (Mar. 25, 1996) ....................... 
1 

4 Wayne R. LaFave, Search and Seizure (3d ed. 
1996) ......................................................................................... 28 

In the Supreme Court of the United States 

No. 99-1030 

CITY OF INDIANAPOLIS, ET AL., PETITIONERS 

v. 

JAMES EDMOND, ET AL. 

ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI 
TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS 
FOR THE SEVENTH CIRCUIT 

BRIEF FOR THE UNITED STATES 
AS AMICUS CURIAE SUPPORTING PETITIONERS 

INTEREST OF THE UNITED STATES 

This case involves the validity under the Fourth 
Amendment of a vehicle checkpoint that serves inter- 
ests in drug detection, license and registration checks, 
and driver sobriety. The United States maintains vehi- 
cle checkpoints for a variety of purposes. Because “the 
smuggling of aliens and drugs are intermingled by 
criminal organizations operating at an international 
level,” Border Patrol officers are cross-designated to 
search for and seize illegal narcotics in their checkpoint 
operations.1 Border Patrol canines are trained to detect 
both concealed humans and drugs. In addition, the For- 
est Service sometimes operates multi-purpose check- 

1 See Memorandum of Understanding Between the Drug En- 
forcement Administration and the Immigration and Naturalization 
Service 1, 3 (Mar. 25, 1996). 

(1) 

2 

points on roads within the National Forest System, 
which can include verification of drivers’ licenses and 
registration, assessments of impairment, and the con- 
duct of canine sniffs of cars’ exteriors. Forest Service 
Handbook 5309.11, Sec. 360 (Sept. 1998). Furthermore, 
because motor vehicle transportation plays a critical 
role in the nationwide distribution of illegal narcotics, 
the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Department 
of Transportation’s Drug Interdiction Assistance Pro- 
gram, and other federal components have a substantial 
interest in efforts to curb drug trafficking on the public 
roadways. 

STATEMENT 

1. From August to November 1998, the Indianapolis 
Police Department operated six motor vehicle “drug 
checkpoints” on public roads. Pet. App. 51a-52a. At 
those checkpoints, police officers stopped a predeter- 
mined number of cars, checked each driver’s license and 
registration, looked for signs of impairment, and, while 
examining each driver’s documentation, walked a 
narcotics-detection dog around the car. Id. at 2a, 25a, 
53a. Stops averaged two to three minutes; officers en- 
deavored to ensure that, absent individualized suspi- 
cion, no vehicle was delayed more than five minutes. 
Id. at 38a, 51a. 

Police officers conducted the checkpoints in accor- 
dance with detailed, written procedures promulgated 
by the Indianapolis Police Department. Pet. App. 26a- 
27a. The time and place of each checkpoint was set by 
supervisory personnel weeks in advance “based on 
geographical suitability, taking into consideration area 
crime statistics and the ability to locate the checkpoint 
in a location which [would] minimize the interference 
with normal traffic flow.” Id. at 56a-57a. The date of 

3 

each checkpoint (but not its exact location) was then 
disseminated to the public. Id. at 37a. Motorists 
approaching the checkpoint were forewarned by lighted 
signs stating: “NARCOTICS CHECKPOINT __ 
MILE AHEAD, NARCOTICS K-9 IN USE, BE 
PREPARED TO STOP.” Id. at 57a. The checkpoint 
itself was identified by marked police cruisers with 
flashing lights. The stopped cars were met by a team of 
police officers, at least one of whom was in full uniform. 
Ibid. The governing procedures required that “no dis- 
cretion [be] given to any officer to stop any vehicle out 
of sequence,” and that “every vehicle * * * stopped 
must be examined in the same manner [with] no excep- 
tions.” Id. at 27a, 54a. 

The “primary goal” of the checkpoints was to detect 
narcotics traffickers and thus “to interrupt the flow of 
illegal narcotics throughout Indianapolis.” Pet. App. 
25a. “[A] secondary purpose of the checkpoints [was] to 
check driver’s licenses and vehicle registrations.” Id. at 
44a. Police stopped a total of 1,161 vehicles, resulting in 
109 arrests and thus an effectiveness rate of 9.4%. Id. 
at 2a-3a, 13a, 55a. Those arrests were divided almost 
equally between traffic and drug offenses. Id. at 55a. 

2. In October 1998, respondents, two motorists who 
had been stopped at checkpoints, filed suit under 42 
U.S.C. 1983 seeking damages and an injunction on the 
ground that the checkpoints violated the Fourth and 
Fourteenth Amendments. Complaint 1, 8. The district 
court certified the case as a class action, Pet. App. 29a- 
30a, but denied a preliminary injunction because it 
found no likelihood of success on the merits of respon- 
dents’ Fourth Amendment claim, id. at 32a-47a. Pro- 
ceeding on a stipulated factual record, the district court 
found that motorists suffered “minimal” subjective and 
objective intrusion at the checkpoints, id. at 37a-40a, 

4 

while the stops effectively advanced important gov- 
ernmental interests in the interdiction of narcotics and 
the enforcement of licensing requirements, id. at 41a- 
45a. 

3. A divided court of appeals reversed, holding that 
the checkpoints violated the Fourth Amendment. Pet. 
App. 1a-23a. 

a. The majority acknowledged that the checkpoint 
stops, if evaluated at the programmatic level, “probably 
are legal, given the high ‘hit’ rate and the only modestly 
intrusive character of the stops,” Pet. App. 3a, and 
given that they “advance[] the strong national, state, 
and local policy of discouraging the illegal use of 
controlled substances,” id. at 4a. The majority held, 
however, that, in view of “the purpose of the roadblocks 

* * * to catch drug offenders,” id. at 11a, the stop of 
each car must be based on individualized suspicion 
because the checkpoints “related to general criminal 
law enforcement, rather than to primarily civil regula- 
tory programs for the protection of health, safety, and 
the integrity of our borders.” Id. at 4a (citation 
omitted). 

The majority distinguished the Border Patrol check- 
points upheld in United States v. Martinez-Fuerte, 428 
U.S. 543 (1976), on the ground that Indianapolis “makes 
no attempt to defend its roadblocks on the basis that it 
is trying to exclude a harmful substance or dangerous 
persons[,] [t]hough that may be the ultimate aim.” Pet. 
App. 10a. And it distinguished the sobriety checkpoints 
upheld in Michigan Dep’t of State Police v. Sitz, 496 
U.S. 444 (1990), because those checkpoints “are de- 
signed to protect other users of the road from the dan- 
gers posed by drunk drivers,” rather than “primarily 
[to] catch[] crooks.” Pet. App. 8a. 

5 

The majority recognized four exceptions to its hold- 
ing that the Fourth Amendment prohibits vehicle 
checkpoints aimed at law enforcement: checkpoints 
“set up to catch a fleeing criminal”; checkpoints set up 
when “it [is] impossible to prevent a crime without an 
indiscriminate search”; checkpoints “the objective of 
which is to protect a specific activity”; and checkpoints 
to prevent “illegal importation whether of persons 

* * * or of goods.” Pet. App. 12a. The court sug- 
gested, moreover, that if the “primary purpose” of the 
checkpoints were to discover violations of the traffic 
laws or drunk drivers, the addition of a narcotics-detec- 
tion dog might be permissible. Id. at 10a-11a. 

b. Judge Easterbrook dissented. He criticized the 
majority’s conclusion that a “law enforcement” purpose 
would render a vehicle checkpoint unreasonable, noting 
that “Martinez-Fuerte approved a roadblock to search 
for alien smuggling, a violation of a criminal law; Sitz 
approved a roadblock to search for drunk driving, a 
violation of a criminal law.” Pet. App. 13a. The dissent 
also disagreed that the primary purpose of a checkpoint 
determines its constitutionality, noting that, under the 
majority’s view, “if Indianapolis set out to find people 
driving without licenses and only later added a dog to 
sniff for drugs * * *, then the program would pass 
constitutional muster. But if the City first decides to 
search for drugs, then adds license checks * * * the 
program is invalid.” Id. at 13a-14a. Similarly, “[i]f a 
program is designed primarily to search for people 
using drugs in the car, and only secondarily to locate 
drugs in the trunk, then it is valid; if it is designed 
primarily to search for carried drugs, and only secon- 
darily for ingested drugs, then it is invalid.” Id. at 14a. 
In the dissent’s view, “the reasonableness inquiry 
under the fourth amendment is objective; it depends on 

6 

what the police do, not on what they want or think.” 
Ibid. 

SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT 

1. Indianapolis’s checkpoint program is consistent 
with the Fourth Amendment because the important 
public interests that are effectively served by the 
checkpoints outweigh the minimal intrusion imposed on 
motorists using the public highways. The City’s 
checkpoints serve not one, but two vital public 
interests: the interdiction of narcotics trafficking and 
the enforcement of license-and-registration require- 
ments for motorists. Drug trafficking on the public 
roadways has proven to be as formidable and intract- 
able a law-enforcement problem as illegal immigration, 
which this Court has held justifies a comparable Border 
Patrol checkpoint program. Drug trafficking’s 
attendant social costs—in lost lives, violence, crime, and 
general public disorder—parallel, if not exceed, those 
public-welfare concerns that sustain sobriety check- 
points. Moreover, because public roadways are the 
primary distribution network for illegal narcotics with- 
in the country, drug traffickers, like alien smugglers, 
depend upon automobile travel for their success. 

This Court’s cases also have repeatedly indicated 
that the Fourth Amendment permits license-and-regis- 
tration checkpoints. Such checkpoints advance impor- 
tant public-safety concerns by ensuring that usage of 
the roadways is limited to those motorists and auto- 
mobiles that satisfy the State’s licensing criteria. 

Further, nothing in the actual execution of the check- 
point process or in the driver’s individual experience at 
the checkpoint exceeds what this Court has previously 
sanctioned under the Fourth Amendment. The only 
factual difference is the addition of a canine sniff of the 

7 

car’s exterior, but, because the sniff neither entails a 
search nor lengthens the seizure, that distinction is of 
no constitutional moment. 

2. The court of appeals invalidated the checkpoints 
because they served the needs of criminal law enforce- 
ment, rather than distinct public policy needs. But so 
do the immigration and sobriety checkpoints that this 
Court has previously upheld. See Michigan Dep’t of 
State Police v. Sitz, 496 U.S. 444 (1990); United States 

v. Martinez-Fuerte, 428 U.S. 543 (1976). Indeed, this 
Court has expressly rejected the imposition of a 
“special needs” requirement on automobile checkpoints. 
Sitz, 496 U.S. at 450. 

The court of appeals also held that the primary pur- 
pose of the checkpoint program’s designers was critical 
to its legality. But the entire scope of the seizure was a 
permissible means of implementing the checkpoints’ 
secondary purpose—license and registration verifica- 
tion. The fact that the checkpoint program simultane- 
ously advances another weighty public interest— 
narcotics detection—without entailing any additional 
intrusion upon motorists’ liberty and privacy should 
enhance, not detract from, the checkpoint’s legitimacy. 
In any event, the constitutionality of identically oper- 
ated checkpoints should not turn upon post-hoc judicial 
rankings of the competing public purposes subjectively 
animating government officials. The Fourth Amend- 
ment’s core function is to regulate what the police do in 
their interactions with individuals, not what they think. 

8 

ARGUMENT 

VEHICLE CHECKPOINTS THAT SERVE GOVERN- 
MENTAL INTERESTS IN DRUG-DETECTION AND 
LICENSE-AND-REGISTRATION INSPECTION ARE 
REASONABLE SEIZURES UNDER THE FOURTH 
AMENDMENT 

A. The Fourth Amendment Permits Vehicle Checkpoints 

Where The Government Interests Served Justify The 

Intrusion 

The “essential purpose” of the Fourth Amendment is 
“to impose a standard of ‘reasonableness’ upon the 
exercise of discretion by government officials.” Dela- 
ware v. Prouse, 440 U.S. 648, 653-654 (1979). The valid- 
ity of a particular practice under the Fourth Amend- 
ment generally turns on balancing the governmental 
interests promoted by the practice against its intrusion 
on Fourth Amendment interests. See, e.g., id. at 654; 
Vernonia School District 47J v. Acton, 515 U.S. 646, 
652-653 (1995). 

Two principles frame the inquiry into the validity of 
Indianapolis’s vehicle checkpoints. First, the Fourth 
Amendment does not impose an “irreducible require- 
ment” of individualized suspicion. Acton, 515 U.S. at 
653; New Jersey v. T.L.O., 469 U.S. 325, 340 (1985). 
Rather, the “touchstone” of the constitutional inquiry is 
“the reasonableness in all the circumstances” of the 
practice at issue. Maryland v. Wilson, 519 U.S. 408, 
411 (1997) (internal quotation marks omitted). 

Second, what is reasonable “depends on the context.” 
T.L.O., 469 U.S. at 337. 

This Court has traditionally 
drawn a distinction between automobiles and homes or 
offices in relation to the Fourth Amendment,” such that 
“warrantless examinations of automobiles have been 
upheld in circumstances in which a search of a home or 

9 

office would not.” South Dakota v. Opperman, 428 U.S. 
364, 367 (1976); see also United States v. Martinez- 
Fuerte, 428 U.S. 543, 561 (1976) (“[O]ne’s expectation of 
privacy in an automobile and of freedom in its operation 
are significantly different from the traditional expecta- 
tion of privacy and freedom in one’s residence.”). “The 
fact that automobiles occupy a special category in 
Fourth Amendment case law is by now beyond doubt.” 
Marshall v. Barlow’s, Inc., 436 U.S. 307, 315 n.10 
(1978). That distinction arises, in part, because of the 
“obviously public nature of automobile travel,” under 
which cars routinely “travel[] public thoroughfares 
where both [their] occupants and [their] contents are in 
plain view.” Opperman, 428 U.S. at 367-368; see also 
Cardwell v. Lewis, 417 U.S. 583, 590 (1974). In addition, 
automobiles, unlike homes or offices, are subject to a 
“web of pervasive regulation.” New York v. Class, 475 
U.S. 106, 112 (1986). 

As an everyday occurrence, police stop and examine 
vehicles when license plates or inspection stickers 
have expired, or if other violations, such as exhaust 
fumes or excessive noise, are noted, or if headlights 
or other safety equipment are not in proper working 
order. 

Opperman, 428 U.S. at 368.2 

Consistent with the special status of automobiles in 
Fourth Amendment jurisprudence, this Court has twice 
upheld vehicle checkpoints as reasonable seizures under 

2 See also Wyoming v. Houghton, 526 U.S. 295, 303-305 (1999) 
(passengers, as well as drivers, have a reduced expectation of pri- 
vacy in cars traveling on the public thoroughfares); Pennsylvania 

v. Labron, 518 U.S. 938, 940 (1996) (per curiam) (noting “the 
individual’s reduced expectation of privacy in an automobile, owing 
to its pervasive regulation”). 

10 

the Fourth Amendment by weighing “the gravity of the 
public concerns served by the seizure, the degree to 
which the seizure advances the public interest, and the 
severity of the interference with individual liberty.” 
Brown v. Texas, 443 U.S. 47, 51 (1979). In United 
States v. Martinez-Fuerte, supra, the Court upheld the 
Border Patrol’s use of permanent, fixed checkpoints on 
roads leading to the interior of the country. The Court 
found the “law enforcement needs served by check- 
points”—controlling the flow of illegal aliens and 
smuggling—to be “substantial[],” 428 U.S. at 556 & 

n.12, while “the consequent intrusion on Fourth 
Amendment interests is quite limited,” id. at 557. The 
checkpoints’ interference with legitimate traffic was 
“minimal,” and the exercise of discretion by officers was 
controlled by the “regularized manner in which estab- 
lished checkpoints are operated.” Id. at 559. 

In Michigan Department of State Police v. Sitz, 496 
U.S. 444 (1990), the Court upheld sobriety checkpoints 
at which cars were briefly stopped and drivers exam- 
ined for signs of intoxication. Applying the “relevant 
authorities” of Martinez-Fuerte and Brown v. Texas, id. 
at 450, the Court noted that the “magnitude” of the 
State’s interest in combating the problem of drunk 
driving was undisputed, id. at 451. On the other side of 
the ledger, the Court found, as it did in Martinez- 
Fuerte, that the intrusion on motorists stopped at 
sobriety checkpoints was “minimal.” Id. at 452. While 
the Court made clear that no searching examination of 
the sobriety checkpoints’ “effectiveness” was required 
in order to sustain them, id. at 454, the Court concluded 
that the ability of the checkpoints to advance the 

11 

States’ interest was sufficient to strike the balance “in 
favor of the state program.” Id. at 455.3 

B. A Vehicle Checkpoint May Validly Be Established To 

Serve The Government’s Interests Both In Drug 

Detection And In Motor Vehicle Regulation 

Applying this Court’s analysis in Martinez-Fuerte 
and Sitz, the checkpoints in this case are valid under 
the Fourth Amendment. 

1. The Interests Served By the Checkpoints Are Sub- 
stantial. 

a. Indianapolis’s checkpoints serve the unquestiona- 
bly vital public interest in reducing the flow of illegal 
drugs, with its enormous attendant costs in human 
lives, social disorder, and related criminal violence. 
Like the problem of alien smuggling and immigration 
violations, there is a “veritable national crisis in law 
enforcement caused by smuggling of illicit narcotics,” 
United States v. Montoya de Hernandez, 473 U.S. 531, 
538 (1985), and “drug smugglers do not hesitate to use 
violence to protect their lucrative trade and avoid 
apprehension,” National Treasury Employees Union v. 
Von Raab, 489 U.S. 656, 669 (1989). “[T]he public has a 
compelling interest in detecting those who would traffic 
in deadly drugs for personal profit.” United States v. 
Place, 462 U.S. 696, 703 (1983). The States’ “interest in 
self-protection,” Von Raab, 489 U.S. at 670, from the 

3 Although the state courts had found sobriety checkpoints 
generally to be “ineffective,” see Sitz, 496 U.S. at 448-449, 453, this 
Court held that the “decision as to which among reasonable alter- 
native law enforcement techniques [to adopt] * * * remains with 
the governmental officials who have a unique understanding of, 
and a responsibility for, limited public resources, including a finite 
number of police officers.” Id. at 453-454. 

12 

influx of illegal narcotics thus is a substantial and 
weighty governmental concern.4 

The pervasive problem of drug smuggling, like alien 
smuggling and other immigration offenses, has a close 
nexus to the usage of public roadways. Whether illegal 
drugs initially arrive in this country by boat, airplane, 
or foot, they at some point end up on the public road- 
ways for national distribution. Cf. Martinez-Fuerte, 
428 U.S. at 552 (“Once within the country, the aliens 
seek to travel inland * * * frequently meeting by 
prearrangement with friends or professional smugglers 
who transport them in private vehicles.”).5 Like alien 
smugglers, drug traffickers are lured by the speedy 
distribution that highways and interstates offer, and 
they are known to have preferred routes for transport- 

4 The court of appeals stated (Pet. App. 10a) that “Indianapolis 
makes no attempt to defend its roadblocks on the basis that it is 
trying to exclude a harmful substance or dangerous persons[,] 
[t]hough that may be the ultimate aim, [instead] the City concedes 
that its proximate goal is to catch drug offenders in the hope of in- 
capacitating them, and deterring others, by criminal prosecution.” 
That analysis overlooks that, by arresting narcotics traffickers, 
confiscating contraband, and deterring others from engaging in 
similar smuggling efforts, Indianapolis’s program does exclude 
drugs from the city. 

5 Border Patrol agents have advised us that, especially follow- 
ing the Mexican marijuana harvest in the Fall, there are times 
when they discover more narcotics than aliens smuggled in cars 
going through their checkpoints. The Border Patrol checkpoints at 
Las Cruces, New Mexico, reported 129 drug seizures from Sep- 
tember through December 1997, valuing approximately $8.6 mil- 
lion. In the first three months of this year alone, those checkpoints 
made 104 seizures of $3.7 million worth of illegal narcotics. 

13 

ing their contraband.6 Public roadways thus represent 
a critical link in the nationwide drug trafficking chain. 

Also like illegal immigration, drug trafficking on the 
public roadways “poses formidable law enforcement 
problems.” Martinez-Fuerte, 428 U.S. at 552. While 
law enforcement personnel can identify and stop some 
suspicious vehicles, as a general proposition “the flow of 
traffic tends to be too heavy to allow the particularized 
study of a given car that would enable it to be identified 
as a possible carrier of illegal [drugs].” Id. at 557. Drug 
traffickers, moreover, possess a “seemingly inexhausti- 
ble repertoire of deceptive practices and elaborate 
schemes,” that includes “adroit selection of source 
locations, smuggling routes, and increasingly elaborate 
methods of concealment.” Von Raab, 489 U.S. at 669.7 
In particular, a requirement of particularized suspicion 
before cars could be stopped at a checkpoint “would 
largely eliminate any deterrent to the conduct of well- 

6 See Pet. App. 12a (“The high hit rate of Indianapolis’s road- 
block scheme suggests that Indianapolis has placed the roadblocks 
in areas of the city in which drug use approaches epidemic propor- 
tions.”); State v. Damask, 936 S.W.2d 565, 573 (Mo. 1996) (drug 
checkpoint on a road that “is known as a popular route for the 
transport of narcotics” upheld because it was designed “to discover 
problems predictably associated with persons who traveled these 
thoroughfares”). 

7 See also United States v. Mendenhall, 446 U.S. 544, 561-562 
(1980) (Powell, J., concurring) (“Much of the drug traffic is highly 
organized and conducted by sophisticated criminal syndicates. 

* * * [M]any drugs * * * may be easily concealed. As a result, 
the obstacles to detection of illegal conduct may be unmatched in 
any other area of law enforcement.”); cf. Florida v. Royer, 460 U.S. 
491, 519 (1983) (Blackmun, J., dissenting) (“The special need for 
flexibility in uncovering illicit drug couriers is hardly debatable. 
Surely the problem is as serious, and as intractable, as the problem 
of illegal immigration.”). 

14 

disguised smuggling operations.” Martinez-Fuerte, 428 
U.S. at 557. 

b. The checkpoint program also serves the secon- 
dary purpose of verifying driver’s licenses and 
registrations. Pet. App. 44a. This Court has repeatedly 
indicated that checkpoints for license and registration 
verification are permissible under the Fourth Amend- 
ment, because they serve the States’ “vital interest in 
ensuring that only those qualified to do so are per- 
mitted to operate motor vehicles, that these vehicles 
are fit for safe operation, and hence that licensing, 
registration, and vehicle inspection requirements are 
being observed.” Prouse, 440 U.S. at 658; see also id. at 
663. Similarly, in Martinez-Fuerte, the Court predi- 
cated its decision upholding checkpoints for illegal 
aliens in part on the existence and historical acceptance 
of license and registration stops. 428 U.S. at 560 n.14 
(“Stops for questioning, not dissimilar to those involved 
here, are used widely at state and local levels to enforce 
laws regarding drivers’ licenses, safety requirements, 
weight limits, and similar matters.”).8 

8 The courts of appeals and highest state courts have unani- 
mously sustained properly constituted license-and-registration 
checkpoints. See Merrett v. Moore, 58 F.3d 1547 (11th Cir. 1995), 
cert. denied, 519 U.S. 812 (1996); United States v. Morales- 
Zamora, 914 F.2d 200, 202-203 (10th Cir. 1990) (collecting cases); 
United States v. McFayden, 865 F.2d 1306 (D.C. Cir. 1989); United 
States v. Prichard, 645 F.2d 854 (10th Cir.) (license and insurance 
checkpoint), cert. denied, 454 U.S. 832 (1981); LaFontaine v. State, 
497 S.E.2d 367 (Ga.), cert. denied, 525 U.S. 947 (1998); see also 
Park v. Forest Serv., 205 F.3d 1034, 1040 (8th Cir. 2000) 
(allegations that checkpoint “consisted of an identification and reg- 
istration check” do not describe an unconstitutional seizure); 
United States v. Trevino, 60 F.3d 333 (7th Cir. 1995), cert. denied, 
516 U.S. 1061 (1996); cf. State v. Rodriguez, 877 S.W.2d 106 (Mo. 
1994) (commercial vehicle inspection checkpoints); but see State v. 

15 

2. The Intrusion on Liberty and Privacy Is Minimal. 

The overall intrusion on motorists’ liberty and 
privacy interests at Indianapolis’s checkpoint, as in 
Martinez-Fuerte and Sitz, is minimal. Officers first ask 
for the driver’s license and registration. Pet. App. 53a.9 
That is a familiar and constitutional inquiry for traffic 
checkpoints. See p. 14, supra. The officers next check 
for signs of driver impairment, Pet. App. 53a, which is 
no more intrusive here than in Sitz. The officers also 
walk a narcotics- detection canine around the exterior 
of the vehicle while the license and registration are 
being checked. See Pet. 3; Pet. App. 57a. A sniff by a 
narcotics-detection dog of the publicly exposed exterior 
of personal effects is not a search. United States v. 
Place, 462 U.S. at 707 (dog sniff of luggage is not a 
search); see also Class, 475 U.S. at 114 (“The exterior of 
a car, of course, is thrust into the public eye, and thus to 
examine it does not constitute a ‘search.’ ”). 

The dog 
makes its “observations from a public vantage point 
where [it] has a right to be.” California v. Ciraolo, 476 
U.S. 207, 213 (1986); see also Pet. App. 40a. And 
motorists have no reasonable expectation of privacy in 
odors, particularly of contraband substances, emanating 
from their automobiles. Moreover, because the canine 
sniff is conducted on a car that has already been prop- 
erly stopped for a license, registration, and sobriety 
check, the sniff itself should not expand the length of 
the detention at the checkpoint and thus does not entail 
an independent seizure of the vehicle and its occupants. 

Larson, 485 N.W.2d 571 (Minn. Ct. App. 1992) (document check- 
point invalidated because officers had too much discretion). 

9 Indiana law requires drivers to display their license and regis- 
tration upon the demand of a police officer. Ind. Code Ann. 
§§ 9-18-2-21(b)(2), 9-24-13-3 (Michie 1997). 

16 

Absent the development of individualized suspicion, the 
average length of the delay is two to three minutes. Id. 
at 38a, 57a. That is not discernibly longer than the time 
motorists are required to spend stopped at a toll booth 
on a busy day or at a traffic light at a busy intersection. 
See Fed. Highway Admin., Traffic Control Devices 
Handbook 4-100 (1983). It is shorter than the average 
time of the Border Patrol checkpoints upheld in 
Martinez-Fuerte. See 428 U.S. at 547 (three to five 
minute stop). The stipulated record reveals no inordi- 
nately intrusive questioning by officers nor visual 
inspection of the vehicle or passengers beyond “what 
can be seen without a search.” Id. at 558. 

The subjective intrusion on law-abiding motorists 
(Sitz, 496 U.S. at 452) is also minor. The police officers’ 
actions are regularized and their discretion is closely 
cabined. The checkpoint locations are selected weeks in 
advance by high-level officials based on reasonable and 
objective criteria, such as crime statistics, traffic vol- 
ume, and operational safety. Pet. App. 56a-57a; see also 
Sitz, 496 U.S. at 453; Martinez-Fuerte, 428 U.S. at 559. 
Cars are stopped on the basis of a predetermined, 
objective formula (such as every tenth car). Pet. App. 
37a-38a, 54a, 57a; cf. Sitz, 496 U.S. at 453. The steps 
officers implement in the checkpoint procedure are also 
regimented, Pet. App. 37a-38a, 53a-54a, providing “visi- 
ble evidence, reassuring to law-abiding motorists, that 
the stops are duly authorized and believed to serve the 
public interest,” Martinez-Fuerte, 428 U.S. at 559. 
Furthermore, the public is provided advance notice of 
the checkpoints’ operation (but not precise location). 
Pet. App. 37a. On the roadways, lighted signs warn 
motorists as they approach the checkpoints. Id. at 57a; 
cf. Martinez-Fuerte, 428 U.S. at 545-546, 559 (because 
of signs, motorists “are not taken by surprise”). The 

17 

presence of marked police cruisers and uniformed offi- 
cers demonstrates the checkpoints’ official character. 
Pet. App. 57a. Consequently, the “motorist can see that 
other vehicles are being stopped, he can see visible 
signs of the officers’ authority, and he is much less 
likely to be frightened or annoyed by the intrusion.” 
Martinez-Fuerte, 428 U.S. at 558. 

3. The Checkpoints Are Highly Effective. 

Indianapolis’s checkpoints are “spectacularly success- 
ful,” Pet. App. 13a, with an arrest rate approaching ten 
percent, id. at 3a, 13a. Roughly half of those arrested 
were charged with driving offenses and the other half 
with drug offenses. Ibid. That effectiveness rate ex- 
ceeds what this Court has sustained in earlier check- 
point cases. See Sitz, 496 U.S. at 455 (1.6% arrest rate 
for drunk drivers); Martinez-Fuerte, 428 U.S. at 554 
(apprehension rates of 17,000 illegal aliens per ten 
million cars and 725 deportable aliens per 146,000 
vehicles). 

* * * 

Balancing those considerations, because Indianapo- 
lis’s checkpoints serve substantial public interests, 
involve no greater degree of intrusion than this Court 
has previously held is permissible for vehicle check- 
points, and have proven to be a highly effective means 
of combating an intractable law enforcement problem 
on the public roadways, they are valid under the 
Fourth Amendment. 

18 

C. The Court Of Appeals Erred In Holding That The 

Checkpoint Program In This Case Is Invalid Because It 

Serves Law Enforcement Interests 

The court of appeals acknowledged that, if Indianapo- 
lis’s checkpoints were reviewed under this Court’s 
checkpoint precedents, they “probably are legal, given 
the high ‘hit’ rate and the only modestly intrusive 
character of the stops,” Pet. App. 3a, and “the strong 
national, state, and local policy of discouraging the 
illegal use of controlled substances,” id. at 4a. The 
court held, however, that motor vehicle checkpoints 
must be justified on the basis of a “special need” other 
than enforcement of the criminal law. Id. at 5a. That is 
incorrect. 

1. This Court’s checkpoint cases foreclose any such 
requirement. In Sitz, the same claim was made that the 
sobriety checkpoints could be upheld only if predicated 
on “a showing of some special governmental need, 
beyond the normal need, for criminal law enforcement.” 
Sitz, 496 U.S. at 450. But this Court found it “perfectly 
plain” that the Court’s requirement of special needs 
beyond routine law enforcement in drug-testing cases 

was in no way designed to repudiate our prior cases 
dealing with police stops of motorists on public 
highways. Martinez-Fuerte, supra, which utilized a 
balancing analysis in approving highway check- 
points for detecting illegal aliens, and Brown v. 
Texas, supra, are the relevant authorities here. 

Ibid. Similarly, in Brown v. Texas, this Court stated 
that the Fourth Amendment requires either that sei- 
zures be based on individualized suspicion “or that the 
seizure must be carried out pursuant to a plan 
embodying explicit, neutral limitations on the conduct 
of individual officers,” without confining the latter to 

19 

special needs above and beyond general law enforce- 
ment interests. 443 U.S. at 51 (emphasis added). 

10 

Sitz cannot be distinguished on the premise (Pet. 
App. 8a-9a) that sobriety checkpoints serve primarily a 
public-safety function. The record in Sitz established 
that “an arrest would be made” for any driver found 
intoxicated at the checkpoint. 496 U.S. at 447. While 
those arrests simultaneously performed the functions of 
enforcing the criminal law and promoting public safety 
by removing drunk drivers from the road, the check- 
points at issue here also serve significant public-safety 
ends by removing drugs from their primary distribu- 
tion network and thus averting the human and societal 
toll that their trafficking and usage exacts. 

Martinez-Fuerte further establishes that the social 
harms to be advanced by a checkpoint program are not 
confined to traffic safety or regulatory ends. There, the 
checkpoints directly enforced the criminal prohibitions 
on alien smuggling and illegal entry, which this Court 
characterized as a “significant law enforcement need[].” 
Martinez-Fuerte, 428 U.S. at 555. Indeed, each of the 
defendants in Martinez-Fuerte had been prosecuted. 
Id. at 547-550. Running through the opinion, moreover, 
is a recognition of the vital role checkpoints play in 
addressing the “formidable law enforcement problems” 
posed by illegal-alien traffic. Id. at 552, 556-557 & n.12. 

Nor can Martinez-Fuerte be distinguished, as the 
court of appeals suggested (Pet. App. 10a), on the basis 

10 See also Prouse, 440 U.S. at 654-655 (“In those situations in 
which the balance of interests precludes insistence upon some 
quantum of individualized suspicion, other safeguards are gener- 
ally relied upon to assure that the individual’s reasonable expecta- 
tion of privacy is not subject to the discretion of the official in the 
field.”) (footnote and internal quotation marks omitted). 

20 

that the Border Patrol’s checkpoints promoted essen- 
tially the “regulatory purpose” of deporting illegal 
aliens. While the passenger aliens found in a stopped 
automobile may be administratively deported rather 
than prosecuted, the car’s driver, whose Fourth 
Amendment rights are directly implicated by the 
stop, is “routinely prosecute[d]” by the government. 
Martinez-Fuerte, 428 U.S. at 553 n.9. Furthermore, 
this Court rejected precisely such an administrative/ 
law enforcement distinction in Martinez-Fuerte. See 
id. at 560 n.14 (“The fact that the purpose of such laws 
is said to be administrative is of limited relevance in 
weighing their intrusiveness on one’s right to travel.”). 

The court of appeals also suggested (Pet. App. 9a) 
that Martinez-Fuerte is irrelevant because the check- 
points in that case were founded upon the federal gov- 
ernment’s unique authority over foreign relations and 
immigration. This Court, however, did not rest its 
analysis on an immigration-authority exception to the 
Fourth Amendment. Nor would such a rationale have 
merit, given that Border Patrol checkpoints occur as far 
as 100 miles away from the border and often are situ- 
ated in locations where metropolitan areas interrupt 
the traffic flow from the border. In any event, apart 
from intrusions at the border, see Montoya de Hernan- 
dez, 473 U.S. at 537-538; United States v. Ramsey, 431 
U.S. 606, 616 (1977), the Fourth Amendment imposes 
the same constraints on the federal government and the 
States. Thus, while immigration control furnished the 
particular interest in Martinez-Fuerte, States also may 
establish checkpoints to serve their own weighty inter- 
est in regulating narcotics smuggling on public roads. 

11 

11 The court of appeals’ contention that checkpoint stops must 
rest on “concerns other than crime detection,” Pet. App. 5a 

21 

2. The rationale for requiring “special needs” beyond 
routine law enforcement in other contexts has no 
application to the checkpoints operated in this case. 
The drug testing cases, for example, involve both a 
search and seizure of an individual, and one that 
implicates a uniquely personal activity. 

12 If such per- 
sonal intrusions were permitted for routine crime 
detection, it would do much to undermine the general 
principle of Fourth Amendment law that intrusions on 
the person require some individualized suspicion. By 
contrast, the “practice of stopping automobiles briefly 
for questioning” at a checkpoint involves only a brief 
seizure and no search; it “has a long history evidencing 
its utility”; and it “is accepted by motorists as incident 

(citation and emphasis omitted), also conflicts with the court’s own 
view (id. at 5a-6a) that roadblocks to detect fugitives or threatened 
violations of criminal laws are permissible. Such roadblocks plainly 
advance criminal law enforcement needs. While they also may 
address particular exigencies in preventing crimes or escapes, 
drug seizures likewise terminate further criminal activity involv- 
ing both the smuggler and the drugs and may thereby avert the 
violence that pervades drug trafficking and drug usage. 

12 See Bond v. United States, 120 S. Ct. 1462, 1464 (2000) 
(“Physically invasive inspection is simply more intrusive than 
purely visual inspection.”); Houghton, 526 U.S. at 303 (cases 
involving “the unique, significantly heightened protection afforded 
against searches of one’s person” do not govern searches during 
automobile stops); Skinner v. Railway Labor Exec. Ass’n, 489 U.S. 
602, 617 (1989) (“There are few activities in our society more per- 
sonal or private than the passing of urine.”); cf. United States v. 
Ortiz, 422 U.S. 891, 895 (1975) (because a traffic stop is “considera- 
bly less intrusive than a search,” suspicionless checkpoints may be 
appropriate for the former but are not for the latter). 

22 

to highway use.” Martinez-Fuerte, 428 U.S. at 561 

n.14. 

13 

D. The Checkpoint In This Case Is Valid Because It Is 

Objectively Justified By Its Secondary Purpose To 

Check Driver’s Licenses And Registrations 

The court of appeals did not find Indianapolis’s check- 
point program unconstitutional because of anything the 
officers did in implementing the checkpoints. Instead, 
the court’s decision turned upon its conclusion that “the 
purpose behind the [checkpoint] program is critical to 
its legality,” Pet. App. 10a (emphasis omitted), and that 
Indianapolis was “concern[ed] * * * primarily with 
catching crooks,” id. at 8a. But even were the Court to 
conclude that an interest in narcotics-detection is insuf- 
ficient to support a checkpoint program, the check- 
points in this case are adequately supported by their 
valid “secondary purpose” (id. at 44a) to check driver’s 
licenses and vehicle registrations. 

1. The district court found—and the court of appeals 
did not disagree—that Indianapolis’s checkpoints had 
two purposes, the primary purpose of narcotics inter- 
diction and the secondary purpose of enforcing the 
drivers’ license and registration laws. Pet. App. 44a. 

13 The court of appeals’ reliance (Pet. App. 5a) on Chandler v. 
Miller, 520 U.S. 305 (1997), was also misplaced. In Chandler, the 
Court stated that an exception to the ordinary requirement of 
individualized suspicion for a search may exist when “ ‘special 
needs’—concerns other than crime detection—are alleged in justi- 
fication of a Fourth Amendment intrusion.” Id. at 314. But, as the 
dissenting opinion noted (Pet. App. 16a), Chandler acknowledged 
(520 U.S. at 308) this Court’s decisions in Martinez-Fuerte and 
Sitz—both of which involved checkpoints that, at least in part, 
served crime detection interests. Further, in Sitz, the Court made 
clear that “special needs” analysis does not apply to vehicle check- 
points. See p. 18, supra. 

23 

Because the constitutional validity of that secondary 
purpose is unquestioned and because the scope of the 
entire seizure was a permissible means of accomplish- 
ing that purpose, the checkpoints are valid under the 
Fourth Amendment regardless of their additional, 
narcotics-detection purpose. Where one of the pur- 
poses served by a vehicle checkpoint serves the impor- 
tant public interests that this Court has held justify 
such operations and where the checkpoint’s additional 
purpose(s) do not alter the length or intrusiveness of 
the seizure, the existence of multiple purposes does not 
raise a Fourth Amendment problem. Cf. Horton v. 
California, 496 U.S. 128, 138 (1990) (“The fact that an 
officer is interested in an item of evidence and fully 
expects to find it in the course of a search should not 
invalidate its seizure if the search is confined in area 
and duration by the terms of a warrant or a valid 
exception to the warrant requirement.”); see also 
Merrett v. Moore, 58 F.3d 1547, 1550-1551 (11th Cir. 
1995), cert. denied, 519 U.S. 812 (1996). 

To illustrate, the checkpoints at issue in Sitz and 
Martinez-Fuerte had significant law-enforcement com- 
ponents. Yet this Court sustained them without quan- 
tifying or weighing the dual law enforcement and public 
interest components of those checkpoints’ purposes. In 
fact, in United States v. Villamonte-Marquez, 462 U.S. 
579 (1983), this Court held that the Customs Service’s 
“substantial” “governmental interest in assuring 
compliance with documentation requirements” 
is “particularly” enhanced, not diminished, when en- 
forced “in waters where the need to deter or apprehend 
smugglers is great.” Id. at 593. 

Furthermore, a constitutional rule for multi-purpose 
checkpoints that turns upon which purpose is “primary” 
and which purpose is “secondary” is unworkable. From 

24 

the vantage point of the individual who is stopped, the 
intrusion is identical whether a license-and-registration 
checkpoint is supplemented with a drug-detection 
canine for the subsidiary purpose of narcotics control, 
or whether a narcotics-interdiction checkpoint serves 
the subsidiary goal of checking driver’s licenses, reg- 
istrations, and sobriety. In either case, officers may 
establish checkpoints with highly regulated protocols 
that include a brief stop, a check of license and registra- 
tion, and examination of the vehicle’s exterior by a 
drug-detection dog. There is no apparent basis for 
invalidating one practice while upholding the other. 
Nor would there be a jurisprudentially practicable way 
for courts to determine which purposes predominated 
for particular checkpoints. Law enforcement agencies 
may establish programs without clearly labeling (or 
prioritizing) the purposes they serve. And the reasons 
for maintaining a mixed-purpose checkpoint may vary 
over time and as public office holders change. The 
result under the Fourth Amendment should not depend 
on such inquiries. 

14 

2. a. A focus on the objective characteristics, rather 
than subjective purposes, of a particular checkpoint is 
consistent with general principles in Fourth Amend- 
ment analysis. “[A]lmost without exception in evaluat- 
ing alleged violations of the Fourth Amendment the 
Court has first undertaken an objective assessment of 

14 See Whren v. United States, 517 U.S. 806, 815 (1996) (“We 
cannot accept that the search and seizure protections of the Fourth 
Amendment are so variable * * * and can be made to turn upon 
such trivialities.”); Massachusetts v. Painten, 389 U.S. 560, 565 
(1968) (White, J., dissenting from dismissal of certiorari) (“[S]end- 
ing state and federal courts on an expedition into the minds of 
police officers would produce a grave and fruitless misallocation of 
judicial resources.”). 

25 

an officer’s actions in light of the facts and circum- 
stances then known to him.” Scott v. United States, 436 
U.S. 128, 137 (1978). 

[T]he fact that the officer does not have the state of 
mind which is hypothecated by the reasons which 
provide the legal justification for the officer’s action 
does not invalidate the action taken as long as the 
circumstances, viewed objectively, justify that 
action. 

Id. at 138. 

15 

That rule equally applies to searches and seizures 
involving traffic or transportation offenses. In Whren 

v. United States, 517 U.S. 806 (1996), this Court unani- 
mously held that a traffic stop for the commission of a 
civil traffic infraction is reasonable, regardless of the 
officers’ underlying motivation to search the car for 
drugs. Id. at 813-815; see also Ohio v. Robinette, 519 
U.S. 33, 38 (1996). In Brower v. County of Inyo, 489 
U.S. 593 (1989), this Court refused to consider the sub- 
jective intent of police officers in determining whether 
a roadblock to stop a fleeing suspect constituted a 
seizure. Id. at 598-599. Similarly, in United States v. 
Robinson, 414 U.S. 218, 236 (1973), the Court held that 
an objectively reasonable arrest for a traffic violation 
justified a search incident to arrest for weapons and 

15 See also Bond, 120 S. Ct. at 1465 n.2 (“[T]he subjective intent 
of the law enforcement officer is irrelevant in determining whether 
that officer’s actions violate the Fourth Amendment * * *; the 
issue is not his state of mind, but the objective effect of his 
actions,” even where the officer lacks individualized suspicion.); 
Graham v. Connor, 490 U.S. 386, 397 (1989) (“prior cases make 
clear” that the “subjective motivations of the individual officers * 

* * ha[ve] no bearing on whether a particular seizure is 
‘unreasonable’ under the Fourth Amendment”). 

26 

evidence, whether or not the officer had any objective 
or fact-specific concern for his safety. 

16 

There is no sufficient reason to adopt a different 
approach for checkpoints. The Brown v. Texas balanc- 
ing test, which generally applies to checkpoint stops, 
see Sitz, 496 U.S. at 450, weighs purely objective 
factors. It looks first at “the gravity of the public 
concerns served by the seizure,” Brown, 443 U.S. at 51 
(emphasis added), not at what primary concerns 
prompted adoption of the checkpoint program. In this 
case, there can be no serious dispute that, whatever the 
intent of the Indianapolis officials who adopted the 
checkpoint program, the checkpoints served the impor- 
tant public interest in ensuring that only properly 
licensed and sober drivers in registered cars occupied 
the public roadways. Those were the first things the 
officers checked for at the roadblocks, those activities 
alone defined the temporal and physical scope of the 
seizure, and those offenses accounted for nearly half of 
the arrests made. 

The second and third Brown v. Texas factors—the 
effectiveness of the checkpoints and the severity of the 
interference with individual liberty—are also quin- 
tessentially objective inquiries. The former often 
focuses on statistical success rates. See Sitz, 496 U.S. 
at 455; Martinez-Fuerte, 428 U.S. at 553-554. And the 
intrusiveness of the seizure from the individual’s 

16 See also Villamonte-Marquez, 462 U.S. at 584 n.3 (upholding a 
brief, suspicionless detention of a ship for a documentation check 
regardless of the agents’ ulterior motive to detect illegal drugs); 
Horton, 496 U.S. at 138-139 (observation of items in plain view 
need not be inadvertent). 

27 

standpoint turns on what officers actually do, not on 
what supervisory officials think. 

17 

b. The court of appeals found (Pet. App. 10a) a 
difference of constitutional magnitude between the 
subjective purpose of individual officers implementing 
the checkpoint, the consideration of which is imper- 
missible, and the aggregated purpose of those law 
enforcement officials who designed the checkpoint, the 
consideration of which it deemed controlling. But if the 
purpose of the officers actually executing the seizure is 
irrelevant, there is no Fourth Amendment justification 
for making dispositive the relative weights that the 
program’s originators attach to the checkpoints multi- 
ple purposes. 

18 It would make little sense for courts to 
invalidate otherwise constitutional checkpoint seizures 
simply because the public officials in a particular 
jurisdiction listed their purposes in the “wrong” order 
in a press release or policy memorandum. 

Nor is a purpose inquiry necessary to prevent “drag- 
net search[es] for criminals.” Pet. App. 10a. “Scrupu- 
lous adherence” to the existing objective limitations on 
checkpoint seizures will accomplish that goal. Horton, 
496 U.S. at 140. As noted above, the justification for 
checkpoints is confined to stops of motor vehicles on 
public roadways because of their unique Fourth 

17 The highway signs in this case warned drivers only of a 
“narcotics checkpoint.” But the content of the warning signs did 
not significantly influence the nature or degree of the intrusion. 
Such warnings are not constitutionally compelled. See Sitz, 496 
U.S. at 447-448 (no indication that warning signs were present). 
And the warnings here would be unlikely to generate “fear and 
surprise * * * in law abiding motorists.” Id. at 452. 

18 See Whren, 517 U.S. at 815 (it is “somewhat easier to figure 
out the intent of an individual officer than to plumb the collective 
consciousness of law enforcement”). 

28 

Amendment status, and thus does not permit seizures 
of pedestrians or searches of persons or cars. There is 
also a practical limitation both on what crimes have a 
sufficiently pervasive connection to the roadways to 
make it sensible to commit law-enforcement resources 
to checkpoints and what crimes can be policed effec- 
tively through plain view inspections or canine sniffs in 
the brief detention time permitted for checkpoint 
seizures. Finally, “the expense to law enforcement 
agencies and public intolerance of the inconvenience 
impose a check on unreasonable recourse to this 
power.” 4 Wayne R. LaFave, Search and Seizure 
§ 9.6(a), at 311 (3d ed. 1996); see also id. § 10.8(d), at 693. 

c. The court of appeals also erred in relying (Pet. 
App. 11a) on this Court’s dicta in Whren, supra, that 
“the exemption from the need for probable cause (and 
warrant), which is accorded to searches made for the 
purpose of inventory or administrative regulation, is 
not accorded to searches that are not made for those 
purposes,” 517 U.S. at 811-812 (emphasis omitted). 
Even assuming that this language applies to checkpoint 
stops, which are not conducted for administrative or 
inventory purposes and which entail limited seizures 
not searches, it does not cast doubt on the validity of 
Indianapolis’s checkpoints. 

First, one reason to question putatively administra- 
tive or inventory searches when they are made for law- 
enforcement purposes is that those searches of persons’ 
homes and business premises, or of automobiles already 
entirely within police custody, normally would require 
the highest level of protection under the Fourth 
Amendment: a warrant or probable cause. Brief auto- 
mobile stops, by contrast, do not typically require that 
level of justification, even outside the checkpoint con- 
text. See, e.g., United States v. Sharpe, 470 U.S. 675 

29 

(1985) (investigatory stop of a vehicle justifiable on 
reasonable suspicion); United States v. Brignoni-Ponce, 
422 U.S. 873 (1975) (same). And checkpoint procedures 
provide an objective level of regularity that protects 
against arbitrary action by law enforcement officers, 
without any need to scrutinize the official purpose. See 
Brown v. Texas, 443 U.S. at 51; Prouse, 440 U.S. at 663. 

Second, and in any event, the Court has never invali- 
dated an otherwise-justified administrative or inven- 
tory search by finding that there also was an underly- 
ing law-enforcement purpose. Administrative and 
inventory searches must be guided by objective limita- 
tions on the police officers’ behavior. 

19 Those limits sub- 
stitute for the traditional probable cause requirement. 
Once such objective limitations are in place, however, 
and the general interests served by administrative and 
inventory searches are furthered by the practice in 
question, the existence of additional, important govern- 
mental purposes for a particular practice should not 
provide a basis for invalidating it under the Fourth 
Amendment. 

20 

19 See New York v. Burger, 482 U.S. 691, 702-703 (1987) (ad- 
ministrative search must “further” a “ ‘substantial’ government in- 
terest” and must be “carefully limited in time, place, and scope”); 
Colorado v. Bertine, 479 U.S. 367, 372 (1987) (“standardized proce- 
dures” required for vehicle inventories); Barlow’s, 436 U.S. at 323 
(“neutral criteria”); Camara v. Municipal Court, 387 U.S. 523, 538 
(1967) (“reasonable legislative or administrative standards” must 
govern administrative searches). 

20 The court of appeals further erred in relying (Pet. App. 11a) 
on the plurality’s pretext language in Texas v. Brown, 460 U.S. 
730, 743 (1983). That language arose entirely in that portion of the 
opinion addressing the requirement in the law at that time that 
evidence in plain view be discovered inadvertently. See Coolidge 

v. New Hampshire, 403 U.S. 443, 466 (1971). This Court dispensed 

30 

CONCLUSION 

The judgment of the court of appeals should be 
reversed. 

Respectfully submitted. 

SETH P. WAXMAN 

Solicitor General 

JAMES K. ROBINSON 

Assistant Attorney General 

MICHAEL R. DREEBEN 

Deputy Solicitor General 

PATRICIA A. MILLETT 

Assistant to the Solicitor 

General 

KARIN B. HOPPMANN 
MICHAEL A. ROTKER 

Attorneys 

MAY 2000 

with that requirement seven years later. Horton, 496 U.S. at 138- 
142.