Treading on Thin Ice

Searches and Inspections in Noncriminal Cases.—Certain early cases held that the Fourth Amendment was applicable only when a search was undertaken for criminal investigatory purposes,⁷¹ and the Supreme Court until recently employed a reasonableness test for such searches without requiring either a warrant or probable cause in the absence of a warrant.

⁷² But in 1967, the Court held in two cases that administrative inspections to detect building code violations must be undertaken pursuant to warrant if the occupant objects.⁷³ "We may agree that a routine inspection of the physical condition of private property is a less hostile intrusion than the typical policeman's search for the fruits and instrumentalities of crime… But we cannot agree that the Fourth Amendment interests at stake in these inspection cases are merely 'peripheral.' 

It is surely anomalous to say that the individual and his private property are fully protected by the Fourth Amendment only when the individual is suspected of criminal behavior."

⁷⁴ Certain administrative inspections utilized to enforce regulatory schemes with regard to such items as alcohol and firearms are, however, exempt from the Fourth Amendment warrant requirement and may be authorized simply by statute.<sup>75

68</sup> Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U.S. 471 (1963). Such evidence is the "fruit of the poisonous tree," Nardone v. United States, 308 U.S. 338, 341 (1939), that is, evidence derived from the original illegality. Previously, if confessions were voluntary for purposes of the self-incrimination clause, they were admissible notwithstanding any prior official illegality. Colombe v. Connecticut, 367 U.S. 568 (1961).

The Town is In Violation of Your Civil rights if they come in without a warrant. 

You can object!!!!

Tell the Code Inspector to....