Camara v. Municipal Court of City and County of San Francisco

The Fourth Amendment protects privacy and security against arbitrary governmental invasions, and it applies to state and local officials through the Fourteenth Amendment. A search of private property without consent is ordinarily unreasonable unless authorized by a valid warrant, subject only to carefully defined exceptions.

A housing inspection may be less hostile than a police search for criminal evidence, but it is not a merely peripheral intrusion on Fourth Amendment interests. A law-abiding resident has a substantial interest in controlling official entry into the home, and housing-code violations or refusal to permit an inspection can lead to criminal penalties.

The warrant requirement supplies protections that a general inspection ordinance cannot. When an inspector demands entry, the resident otherwise cannot know whether the inspection is authorized, whether the particular premises properly fall within the inspection program, or what limits apply to the inspection. Without a warrant, the resident can test those questions only by refusing entry and risking prosecution.

The public importance of health, fire, and housing enforcement did not justify a categorical warrant exception. The relevant question was not whether government may conduct such inspections, but whether an impartial magistrate must authorize them. The Court found no showing that a reasonable warrant procedure would frustrate code-enforcement programs.

Probable cause measures reasonableness in light of the governmental interest that supports the search. In a criminal investigation, the government ordinarily needs reason to believe that particular evidence of crime will be found at a particular place. But housing inspections pursue a different objective: broad compliance with minimum standards that prevent dangers to health and safety.

Routine area inspections were reasonable because they have longstanding acceptance, serve an important preventive function, and may be the only effective way to discover dangers that are not visible from outside, such as defective wiring. The inspections are also relatively limited because they are not personal searches and are not primarily directed at uncovering criminal evidence.

Accordingly, a magistrate may find probable cause when reasonable inspection standards apply to the dwelling. Those standards may depend on factors such as the time since the last inspection, the type of building, or conditions in the surrounding area; they need not depend on specific knowledge that this particular residence is substandard.

This approach did not make the warrant a rubber stamp. A neutral magistrate still determines whether the contemplated search is justified by a valid public interest and whether its scope is suitably limited, while the applicable probable-cause standard remains tailored to the nature of an administrative inspection.

The Court preserved the traditional authority to conduct prompt warrantless inspections in genuine emergencies, where an immediate health or safety need makes resort to a warrant impracticable. But routine area inspections generally lack that urgency.

As a practical matter, officials ordinarily may request consent first and seek a warrant after entry is refused, unless a citizen complaint or another satisfactory reason supports obtaining immediate authority. The decision also did not require officials to use force merely because they had authority to inspect.

Here, inspectors made repeated attempts to enter Camara's leasehold, but no emergency required immediate access and no warrant was sought. The building manager's consent to enter common or public portions of the building did not authorize a search of Camara's private premises.