Soldal v. Cook County

The decision clarified Fourth Amendment jurisprudence, declaring that property rights were still a factor in Fourth Amendment analysis, and that a person's expectation of privacy was not the only thing that the Fourth Amendment protected.

In May of 1987, Terrace Properties, the owner of Willoway Terrace mobile home park in Elk Grove, Illinois, began eviction proceedings against Edward and Mary Soldal. The Soldals lived with their four children in a trailer home at Willoway Terrace. The suit was dismissed on 2 June 1987, but Terrace Properties and its manager, Margaret Hale, brought a second eviction suit in August of 1987, claiming that the Soldals had not paid their rent. The case was set for trial on 22 September 1987, but Hale and Terrace Properties took their own action in early September.

On 4 September 1987, Hale told the Cook County Sheriff's Department that she was preparing to move the Soldal's trailer home away from the mobile home park. Hale asked that sheriff deputies be present at the scene to prevent any resistance by the Soldal family. Two Terrace Properties employees arrived at Willoway Terrace later that day, accompanied by a deputy sheriff. The employees wrenched the sewer and water connections from the trailer, disconnected the phone, tore off the trailer's canopy and skirting, hooked the home to a tractor, and hauled the Soldal's home off the property.

All this time, Edward Soldal was attempting to put a stop to the actions of the Terrace Properties employees. Soldal told two other sheriff's deputies who arrived at the scene that he wanted to file a complaint against the Terrace employees for criminal trespass, and the deputy sheriffs referred Soldal to a Deputy Lieutenant Jones, who was nearby in Hale's office. At Hale's office, Jones told Soldal to remain outside while he conferred with Hale and other Terrace Properties employees for 20 minutes. Jones then spent another 30 minutes talking with a district attorney, who advised Jones that the police could not arrest the Terrace employees for criminal trespass because the matter was between the landlord and tenant. Throughout the incident, the sheriff deputies knew that Terrace Properties did not have an eviction order from any court.

At a hearing held on 9 September, the judge presiding over the eviction proceedings ruled that the eviction was unauthorized and ordered Terrace Properties to return the Soldal's trailer home to the lot. The Soldals were evicted in December of 1987, but they had already filed a civil rights suit under 42 U.S.C.A. sec. 1983 against Terrace Properties, Hale, and the Cook County Sheriff's Department. In the complaint, the Soldals alleged that Terrace Properties and Hale had conspired with the police to violate their Fourteenth Amendment right to due process and their Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable seizures.

The defendants quickly moved for summary judgment, and the federal district court granted the motion. According to the district court, the Soldals had offered no proof of a conspiracy with the police. Thus, the Soldals had not supported their claim of "state action," a requirement for civil rights claims that ask for damages from the government. "State action" is a term that describes a connection between government and the unlawful activity. On appeal, the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit disagreed with the district court's conclusion, holding that there was, in fact, state action when Soldal's trailer home was ripped from its moorings and moved. Nevertheless, the appeals court held for the defendants, ruling that the seizure of the Soldal's trailer home did not constitute a seizure within the boundaries covered by the Fourth Amendment; nor did it constitute a deprivation of due process under the Fourteenth Amendment.

The Seventh Circuit appeals court agreed to hear the case again, this time with all the judges weighing in on the case, but a majority within the appeals court came up with the same decision. According to the appeals court, the seizure was not made in the course of public law enforcement and it did not invade the Soldal's privacy. Thus, the seizure was not within the purview of the Fourth Amendment because only privacy is protected by the Fourth Amendment, not a "pure deprivation of property." The only cause of action Soldal could maintain, said the appeals court, was under the Due Process Clauses of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments, and that claim had not been proved by Soldal. Soldal petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court, which agreed to hear the case.

In a unanimous decision, the High Court reversed. Justice White, writing for the Court, opened the analysis by citing Supreme Court precedent and defining the word seizure as a "meaningful interference with an individual's possessory interest." The Court noted that at the heart of the Fourth Amendment is "the right of a man to retreat into his own home" and observed that in Soldal's case, the home "was not only seized, it literally was carried away, giving new meaning to the term `mobile home.' We fail to see," the Court continued, "how being unceremoniously dispossessed of one's home in the manner alleged here can be viewed as anything but a seizure invoking protection of the Fourth Amendment."

The Court declined to rule on the issue of whether the Fourth Amendment was actually violated in the case because that question had not been presented to the Court. The Court held only that the Fourth Amendment applied to the seizure in Soldal's case, but it went to great lengths to explain its holding. The federal appeals court had explained that unless it held as it did, "every repossession and eviction with police assistance" would be open to a Fourth Amendment claim. Such a holding would, according to the appeals court, "trivialize the amendment and gratuitously shift a large body of routine commercial litigation from the state courts to the federal courts," a fate that could be avoided by recognizing a difference between "possessory and privacy interests."

In response, the Court called attention to the language of the Fourth Amendment, which indicated that "persons, houses, papers, and effects" were protected from unreasonable searches and seizures. This language, as well as the High Court's prior case law, called for a different ruling than the one delivered by the appeals court. In United States v. Jacobsen (1984), the Court had examined the search and seizure and chemical testing of suspected narcotics from a privacy standpoint, ruling that the seizure did not violate the defendant's right to privacy. The Court in Jacobsen went on, though, to analyze the seizure from a possessory standpoint as well. A similar analysis had been conducted by the Court in United States v. Place (1983).

Cook County, the sheriff's officers, Terrace Properties, Hale, and the other respondents argued that the Court's prior case law called for a different result. The Court refuted the arguments advanced by the respondents as misconstructions of its prior case law. The rulings in Warden, Maryland Penitentiary v. Hayden (1967) and Katz v. United States (1967), for example, did not suggest that privacy was the sole interest protected by the Fourth Amendment. In each case cited by the respondents, the Court found language that contradicted the petitioners' interpretations, and the Court remained "unconvinced that any of the Court's prior cases support the view that the Fourth Amendment protects against unreasonable searches of property only where privacy or liberty is also implicated."

The appeals court had created a difference between seizures that are the outcome of a search and seizures that are the outcome of something other than a search. The High Court found this division "interesting and creative," but it was unconvinced. The reason why an officer might enter a house or seize property was "wholly irrelevant to the threshold question whether the [Fourth] Amendment applies." What really mattered, declared the Court, was "the intrusion on the people's security from governmental interference," and not whether the person is suspected of criminal behavior.

The High Court dismissed the petitioner's prediction--also the appeals court's theory--that a holding for Soldal would make routine matters attended by police into federal cases. Under the Court's opinion, many seizures similar to those in Soldal's case would survive judicial scrutiny. Had Hale and Terrace Properties possessed a valid court order, for example, the seizure of Soldal's home would not have been unreasonable. Calling the case something other than a "garden variety" landlord-tenant or commercial conflict, the Court held in favor of Soldal and sent the case back to the lower courts.