Section 9.30 Administrative Searches

• Library: Criminal Practice 2012 Supp

b. (§9.30) Administrative Searches

In a series of cases beginning with inspections of homes and businesses for compliance with health and safety laws, the United States Supreme Court developed what has become known as the administrative exception to the warrant requirement. That exception allows a variety of search activities motivated by protection of public health and safety unrelated to criminal activity. Although it initially required administrative warrants for such activity, Camara v. Mun. Court of City & County of San Francisco, 387 U.S. 523, 531–39 (1967), the exception has been extended to allow warrantless searches in many situations. The exception has been applied to the search of homes and businesses for fire and code violations, Camara, 387 U.S. 523; see v. City of Seattle, 387 U.S. 541 (1967), and to closely regulated businesses for compliance with regulatory schemes, see, e.g., N.Y. v. Burger, 482 U.S. 691 (1987) (auto junkyards); Donovan v. Dewey, 452 U.S. 594 (1981) (quarries); United States v. Biswell, 406 U.S. 311 (1972) (gun dealers). Although this exception allowing warrantless inspections was initially limited to businesses having “a long tradition of close government supervision,” Marshall v. Barlow’s, Inc., 436 U.S. 307, 313 (1978), or “pervasiveness and regularity” of regulation, Dewey, 452 U.S. at 606, the Court’s extension of the exception to searches of automobile junkyards, conducted by the police rather than inspectors, with the primary purpose of deterring car theft, Burger, 482 U.S. at 691, is some indication that the exception has been considerably broadened.

In Burger, however, the Court continued to focus on five factors justifying warrantless administrative searches:

1. The reduced expectation of privacy in a closely regulated industry

2. A substantial government interest in the regulatory scheme

3. The need for frequent and unannounced inspections that would be frustrated by a warrant requirement

4. That the scheme provides a “constitutionally adequate substitute for a warrant,” id. at 692, based on the regularity and scope of authorized inspections

5. That the inspections are carefully limited in time, place, and scope.

When searches meet these requirements, they will likely be found to be within the scope of the administrative exception. Burger, 482 U.S. at 702–03.

Missouri courts have had the opportunity to address how far the administrative search doctrine extends. In Bezayiff v. City of St. Louis, 963 S.W.2d 225...