Supreme Court declares warrantless searches of hotel registries illegal

Data included credit card, home address, driver's license, and vehicle license.


by David Kravets - Jun 22, 2015 11:00am PDT  Ars Technica


Todd Lappin

The Supreme Court gave a big boost to privacy Monday when it ruled that hotels and motels could refuse law enforcement demands to search their registries without a subpoena or warrant. The justices were reviewing a challenge to a Los Angeles ordinance requiring hotels to provide information to law enforcement—including guests' credit card number, home address, driver's license details, and vehicle license number—at a moment's notice. Similar ordinances exist in about a hundred other cities stretching from Atlanta to Seattle.

Los Angeles claimed the ordinance (PDF) was needed to battle gambling, prostitution, and even terrorism, and that guests would be less likely to use hotels and motels for illegal purposes if they knew police could access their information at will.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, writing for the 5-4 majority, ruled (PDF) that the Los Angeles ordinance violated the Fourth Amendment and is an illegal "pretext to harass hotel operators and their guests."

"Even if a hotel has been searched 10 times a day, every day, for three months, without any violation being found, the operator can only refuse to comply with an officer’s demand to turnover the registry at his or her own peril," Sotomayor wrote.

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The hotel operators who brought the challenge faced six months in jail and a $1,000 fine for refusing to comply.

But the decision doesn't mean that hotel operators are forbidden from divulging the information upon demand if they choose to do so, the majority ruled.

"To be clear, we hold only that a hotel owner must be afforded an opportunity to have a neutral decision maker review an officer's demand to search the registry before he or she faces penalties for failing to comply. Actual review need only occur in those rare instances where a hotel operator objects to turning over the registry," Sotomayor wrote.

Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the dissent, said that "The law is constitutional in most, if not all, of its applications." He scoffed at Sotomayor saying the authorities should get a subpoena or warrant to acquire such information, which Los Angeles requires hotels to keep for at least 90 days. He said Monday's majority decision would hinder sex trafficking and human smuggling investigations, too.

"This proposal is equal parts 1984 and Alice in Wonderland," he wrote.

Sotomayor was joined by Justices Anthony Kennedy, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, and Elena Kagan.

The case is the third high-profile Fourth Amendment decision the court has issued in three years. In 2012, the justices ruled that authorities generally need search warrants when they affix GPS devices to vehicles. And last year, the justices ruled that the authorities need warrants to peek into the mobile phones of suspects they arrest.

In the case decided Monday, Los Angeles hoteliers argued that the law violated their rights, and the San Francisco-based 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals agreed in 2013. The city of Los Angeles appealed, arguing (PDF) that the ordinance helps both local and federal authorities in investigations of all types. The case's briefs can be viewed here.