In a unanimous panel opinion issued on August 12, 2022, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit has ordered that Horwitz Law, PLLC appellate client Kenneth Mynatt’s malicious prosecution and civil conspiracy claims against the United States—maintained under the Federal Tort Claims Act—be reinstated and permitted to move forward. The Court’s unanimous ruling, authored by Judge Richard Griffin, sets critical Circuit precedent that presenting false evidence to secure an indictment is not “discretionary” conduct within the meaning of the Federal Tort Claims Act’s “discretionary function” exception.
“The question here is whether presenting false evidence (in testimonial or documentary form) to a prosecutor and then to a grand jury is the type of conduct ‘that the discretionary function exception was designed to shield.’ The answer here is plainly no,” Judge Griffin explains. In so holding, the Sixth Circuit has joined other federal courts in concluding that “[t]here can be no argument that perjury is the sort of legislative or administrative decision grounded in social, economic, and political policy that Congress sought to shield from second-guessing.” In reversing Middle District of Tennessee District Court Judge William Campbell’s contrary ruling, the Panel further “agree[d] with Mynatt that the district court framed the issue incorrectly and erred[.]”
“We are proud to have represented Mr. Mynatt on appeal and to have won him a unanimous, precedent-setting reversal that permits his Federal Tort Claims Act claims against the United States to move forward,” said Horwitz Law, PLLC principal Daniel A. Horwitz, who represented Mr. Mynatt on appeal along with co-counsel Lindsay Smith.
Read the Sixth Circuit’s unanimous ruling in Kenneth J. Mynatt v. United States of America, et al., here. Mr. Mynatt’s briefing in the case and selected media coverage are available below.
As part of Horwitz Law, PLLC’s appellate practice, Horwitz Law has successfully represented appellate clients in high-stakes, high-profile appeals before the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, the Tennessee Supreme Court, the Tennessee Court of Appeals, the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals, the Tennessee Supreme Court Special Workers’ Compensation Appeals Panel, and in administrative agency appeals to Davidson County Chancery Court. Horwitz Law also provides amicus curiae representation in both state and federal appellate courts. If you are seeking appellate representation, you can purchase a consultation from Horwitz Law here.
In an important win against investigative abuse, the Estate of Jocques Clemmons has secured all of the relief that it sought in a February 9, 2018 lawsuit concerning the Metro Nashville Police Department’s efforts to search Mr. Clemmons’ cell phone and social media accounts following his death. The MNPD and MNPD Detective Danny Satterfield—who procured the warrants at issue and was similarly sued by Mr. Clemmons’ estate—also formally acknowledged that the search warrants that were sought against Mr. Clemmons could “be construed as overbroad.”
Following a settlement agreement reached on March 2nd, the MNPD agreed to relinquish Mr. Clemmons’ cell phone to his mother, which it had refused to turn over for more than a year following Mr. Clemmons’ death. Yesterday, in keeping with the parties’ settlement agreement, the MNPD also filed a Declaration of Compliance certifying that the defendants had “administratively expunged and destroyed all data in their possession retrieved from Jocques Clemmons’ Instagram account and Facebook account.” Accordingly, earlier this morning, the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee issued a Final Order terminating the case.
The lawsuit arose out of a fatal officer-involved shooting on February 2017, during which Mr. Clemmons was shot in the back. Days after Mr. Clemmons was killed, MNPD Detective Danny Satterfield filed three search warrant applications seeking “any/all data contained and/or stored within” Mr. Clemmons’ Facebook account, Instagram account, and cell phone. Without any stated time or content limitation whatsoever, the warrants specifically sought Mr. Clemmons’ “pictures, videos, audio, text messages, incoming/outgoing Facebook Messanger [sic] conversations, voicemails, chat logs, contact information, call logs, emails, internet data, Wi-Fi data, IP address(es), search history, maps, locations, GPS data, drafts, deleted files/folders, etc.”
Officer Satterfield’s search warrant applications stated under oath that he had probable cause to believe that all of the data on Mr. Clemmons’ social media accounts and cell phone contained “certain evidence” of a crime committed by Mr. Clemmons, who was by then deceased and not subject to arrest. A month later, however, the MNPD acknowledged that whether Mr. Clemmons’ social media accounts or cell phone contained any relevant evidence was actually “unknown.” Disturbingly, such efforts to rifle through decedents’ social media accounts and cell phones in search of damaging information after controversial officer-involved shootings are not isolated.
“While we remain disappointed that these three wildly overbroad and comically unconstitutional search warrants were ever sought or approved in the first place, we appreciate that the MNPD has now taken the steps necessary to remedy those prior illegalities,” said attorney Daniel Horwitz, who represented Mr. Clemmons’ estate. “The Clemmons family is very happy to have back his phone—which contains several cherished family photos—and it is satisfied that the MNPD has now destroyed the data that it unlawfully obtained from Mr. Clemmons’ social media accounts following his death.”
In what may well have been the most comprehensive hearing on civil asset forfeiture ever held, the Tennessee Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights held a day-long hearing on Tennessee’s forfeiture laws at the Nashville Public Library on Monday, July 24th. The hearing featured testimony from District Attorneys past and present, police officers, legislators, attorneys, scholars, local and national advocacy groups, individuals affected by Tennessee’s forfeiture laws, and others interested in the topic. Video footage of the Committee’s hearing is available at the links that follow:
Panelists: Glenn R. Funk (District Attorney, Nashville and Davidson County); D. Michael Dunavant (District Attorney, Tennessee’s 25th Judicial District, President Trump’s nominee for U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Tennessee); Stephen D. Crump (District Attorney, Tennessee’s 10th Judicial District); Carlos Lara (Lieutenant, Metro Nashville Police Department)
Panelists: State Representative Mike Carter (R-Ooltewah); State Representative John Ray Clemmons (D-Nashville); State Representative William G. Lamberth (R-Cottontown); State Representative Martin Daniel (R-Knoxville); State Representative Harold M. Love, Jr. (D-Nashville); State Representative G.A. Hardaway (D-Memphis)
Panelists: Vikrant Reddy (Senior Research Fellow, Charles Koch Institute); Lee McGrath (Senior Legislative Counsel, Institute for Justice); Hedy Weinberg (Executive Director, ACLU of Tennessee); Julie Warren (State Director, Tennessee/Kentucky Right on Crime)
Panelists: George Frank Lannom (Tennessee Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers); Joy Radice (Professor of Law, University of Tennessee College of Law); John Morris Miles (Attorney, Union City); Ben Raybin (Attorney, Nashville); Kyle Mothershead (Attorney, Nashville); Elliot Ozment (Attorney, Nashville)
Panelists: Jackie Sims (Tennessee State Conference of the NAACP); Christopher M. Bellamy (President, Napier-Looby Bar Association); Samuel Lester (Street Outreach and Advocacy Coordinator, Open Table Nashville)
The hearing record will remain open for public comment until August 23, 2017. If you would like to submit comments for consideration, please email Jeff Hinton, Southern Regional Director for the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, at [email protected]. Following the conclusion of the public comment period, the Tennessee Advisory Committee will consider all commentary and prepare a final report and recommendation.
Selected press coverage of the hearing is available below.
Case Update: On August 30, 2016, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered the State of Tennessee to file a response to the petition for writ of certiorari filed in this case by defendant Terry Norris. The State’s response was filed on September 29th, and it is accessible here. Mr. Norris’s petition for writ of certiorari was also featured as the “petition of the day” on SCOTUSblog last Friday.
Statistically speaking, the Supreme Court’s request for a response from the Tennessee Attorney General raises the likelihood that the court will accept this case for review from approximately 1% to roughly 10%-20%. If granted, Norris v. Lester will be one of the most significant cases to reach the U.S. Supreme Court out of Tennessee in recent history.
In a recent petition for writ of certiorari filed with the United States Supreme Court, a Tennessee defendant represented by Kirkland & Ellis – a white shoe law firm based in Washington, D.C. – has presented a direct challenge to the Memphis Police Department’s once-pervasive “48-hour hold” policy. The defendant’s cert. petition draws heavily on legal scholarship published by this author and by University of Memphis Law Professor Steven Mulroy in 2015 and 2013, respectively.[1] Both law review articles condemn as unconstitutional the practice of arresting suspects without a warrant and intentionally delaying their right to a hearing before a judge so that law enforcement can use the delay to gather additional incriminating evidence.
Until recently, such 48-hour investigative holds were utilized regularly throughout Shelby County, with some estimates indicating that they were carried out approximately 1,000 times per year.[2] As a general rule, suspects who were subjected to the Memphis Police Department’s “hold” policy would be arrested without a warrant on suspicion of having committed a crime, and they would then be interrogated by law enforcement for the next 48 hours. If additional incriminating evidence was discovered in the interim, then the individual would be brought in front of a magistrate for a “Gerstein hearing”: a constitutionally required proceeding in which a judge or magistrate reviews the legitimacy of a warrantless arrest to ensure that the arresting officers had probable cause to make it. If additional incriminating evidence was not discovered, however, then the officers would typically let the suspect go.
The primary problem with such a practice, however, is that it violates the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition against unreasonable seizures. In the 1991 case County of Riverside v. McLaughlin,500 U.S. 44, 56 (1991), the U.S. Supreme Court made clear beyond any doubt that intentionally delaying a suspect’s Gerstein hearing “for the purpose of gathering additional evidence to justify the arrest” is unconstitutional. Notwithstanding this unambiguous declaration, however, some courts – including the Tennessee Supreme Court – have repeatedly turned a blind eye toward law enforcement’s illicit use of “investigative holds” so long as it was ultimately determined that the arresting officers had probable cause to make the arrest in the first place. However, as this author details in his (award-winning!)[3] 2015 Memphis Law Review article: The First 48: Ending the Use of Categorically Unconstitutional Investigative Holds in Violation of County of Riverside v. McLaughlin, this holding is in error for five separate reasons:
“First, this conclusion confounds the essential distinction between a judicial determination of probable cause, which is a constitutional right, and a probable cause determination made by law enforcement, which carries no constitutional significance. Second, it violates the “administrative purpose” requirement initially established by the Supreme Court in Gerstein and subsequently reaffirmed in McLaughlin, which permits law enforcement to delay a warrantless arrestee’s Gerstein hearing for administratively necessary reasons only. Third, this conclusion fails to grasp the crucial distinction between, on the one hand, delaying a warrantless arrestee’s Gerstein hearing for investigative reasons, and on the other, continuing an investigation while the administrative steps leading up to a warrantless arrestee’s Gerstein hearing are simultaneously being completed. Fourth, such a holding renders McLaughlin‘s express prohibition on “delays for the purpose of gathering additional evidence to justify [an] arrest” superfluous, because all arrests that are unsupported by probable cause are already prohibited by the Fourth Amendment. Fifth, by introducing hindsight bias into probable cause determinations and by allowing a substantial number of warrantless arrests to evade judicial review of any kind, this holding substantially diminishes the value of the check on law enforcement that Gerstein was meant to provide.[4]“
This is the second year in a row that investigative holds have reached the steps of the Supreme Court, with a similar petition for writ of certiorari having been filed by two veteran Supreme Court litigators last Spring. There is also an existing (and growing) Circuit split on the issue, which significantly raises the likelihood that the pending petition will be granted. Given the vanishingly small number of cases accepted by the Supreme Court each term, however, and given that the Court is currently short-staffed as a consequence of the U.S. Senate’s unprecedented refusal to hold confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland, the likelihood of any individual cert. petition being accepted for review remains minuscule.
Questions about this article? Email Daniel Horwitz at [email protected].
[1] Daniel A. Horwitz, The First 48: Ending the, Use of Categorically Unconstitutional Investigative Holds in Violation of County of Riverside v. McLaughlin, 45 U. Mem. L. Rev. 519 (2015), available at https://works.bepress.com/daniel_horwitz/3/; Steven J. Mulroy, “Hold” On: The Remarkably Resilient, Constitutionally Dubious 48-Hour Hold, 63 Case W. Res. L. Rev. 815 (2013).
[2] Horwitz, supra at 529 (citing Mulroy, supra, at 846).
[3]The First 48 was selected as a “must-read” publication by the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers’ “Getting Scholarship into Court Project” and featured in the June 2015 edition of The Champion magazine.
[4] Horwitz, supra, at 522–23 (citations omitted).
In a recent petition for writ of certiorari filed with the United States Supreme Court, a Tennessee defendant represented by Kirkland & Ellis – a white shoe law firm based in Washington, D.C. – has presented a direct challenge to the Memphis Police Department’s once-pervasive “48-hour hold” policy. The defendant’s cert. petition draws heavily on legal scholarship published by this author and by University of Memphis Law Professor Steven Mulroy in 2015 and 2013, respectively.[1] Both law review articles condemn as unconstitutional the practice of arresting suspects without a warrant and intentionally delaying their right to a hearing before a judge so that law enforcement can use the delay to gather additional incriminating evidence.
Until recently, such 48-hour investigative holds were utilized regularly throughout Shelby County, with some estimates indicating that they were carried out approximately 1,000 times per year.[2] As a general rule, suspects who were subjected to the Memphis Police Department’s “hold” policy would be arrested without a warrant on suspicion of having committed a crime, and they would then be interrogated by law enforcement for the next 48 hours. If additional incriminating evidence was discovered in the interim, then the individual would be brought in front of a magistrate for a “Gerstein hearing”: a constitutionally required proceeding in which a judge or magistrate reviews the legitimacy of a warrantless arrest to ensure that the arresting officers had probable cause to make it. If additional incriminating evidence was not discovered, however, then the officers would typically let the suspect go.
The primary problem with such a practice, however, is that it violates the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition against unreasonable seizures. In the 1991 case County of Riverside v. McLaughlin,500 U.S. 44, 56 (1991), the U.S. Supreme Court made clear beyond any doubt that intentionally delaying a suspect’s Gerstein hearing “for the purpose of gathering additional evidence to justify the arrest” is unconstitutional. Notwithstanding this unambiguous declaration, however, some courts – including the Tennessee Supreme Court – have repeatedly turned a blind eye toward law enforcement’s illicit use of “investigative holds” so long as it was ultimately determined that the arresting officers had probable cause to make the arrest in the first place. However, as this author details in his (award-winning!)[3] 2015 Memphis Law Review article: The First 48: Ending the Use of Categorically Unconstitutional Investigative Holds in Violation of County of Riverside v. McLaughlin, this holding is in error for five separate reasons:
“First, this conclusion confounds the essential distinction between a judicial determination of probable cause, which is a constitutional right, and a probable cause determination made by law enforcement, which carries no constitutional significance. Second, it violates the “administrative purpose” requirement initially established by the Supreme Court in Gerstein and subsequently reaffirmed in McLaughlin, which permits law enforcement to delay a warrantless arrestee’s Gerstein hearing for administratively necessary reasons only. Third, this conclusion fails to grasp the crucial distinction between, on the one hand, delaying a warrantless arrestee’s Gerstein hearing for investigative reasons, and on the other, continuing an investigation while the administrative steps leading up to a warrantless arrestee’s Gerstein hearing are simultaneously being completed. Fourth, such a holding renders McLaughlin‘s express prohibition on “delays for the purpose of gathering additional evidence to justify [an] arrest” superfluous, because all arrests that are unsupported by probable cause are already prohibited by the Fourth Amendment. Fifth, by introducing hindsight bias into probable cause determinations and by allowing a substantial number of warrantless arrests to evade judicial review of any kind, this holding substantially diminishes the value of the check on law enforcement that Gerstein was meant to provide.[4]“
This is the second year in a row that investigative holds have reached the steps of the Supreme Court, with a similar petition for writ of certiorari having been filed by two veteran Supreme Court litigators last Spring. There is also an existing (and growing) Circuit split on the issue, which significantly raises the likelihood that the pending petition will be granted. Given the vanishingly small number of cases accepted by the Supreme Court each term, however, and given that the Court is currently short-staffed as a consequence of the U.S. Senate’s unprecedented refusal to hold confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland, the likelihood of any individual cert. petition being accepted for review remains minuscule.
Questions about this article? Email Daniel Horwitz at [email protected].
[1] Daniel A. Horwitz, The First 48: Ending the, Use of Categorically Unconstitutional Investigative Holds in Violation of County of Riverside v. McLaughlin, 45 U. Mem. L. Rev. 519 (2015), available at https://works.bepress.com/daniel_horwitz/3/; Steven J. Mulroy, “Hold” On: The Remarkably Resilient, Constitutionally Dubious 48-Hour Hold, 63 Case W. Res. L. Rev. 815 (2013).
[2] Horwitz, supra at 529 (citing Mulroy, supra, at 846).
[3]The First 48 was selected as a “must-read” publication by the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers’ “Getting Scholarship into Court Project” and featured in the June 2015 edition of The Champion magazine.
[4] Horwitz, supra, at 522–23 (citations omitted).
Tennessee drivers beware: stray outside your lane – even an inch, and even for just a moment – and you’re subject to being seized and arrested by law enforcement. Also, you’ve just committed a crime that can land you in jail for up to a month.
In a pair of companion cases handed down by the Tennessee Supreme Court on Thursday afternoon, the Court observes that “[o]ur legislature has chosen to criminalize the common driving infraction” of crossing lane lines. Moreover, the Court explains, the fact that “drivers in Tennessee [] cross lane lines ‘all the time’” makes no difference. No matter how minor the offense, if you’re suspected of having committed any driving infraction of any kind anywhere in the state, then neither the Fourth Amendment nor the Tennessee Constitution will protect you.
These holdings – surprising as they may seem – actually bring Tennessee law in line with the overwhelming majority of jurisdictions that have analyzed the issue over the past twenty years. In 1996, the United States Supreme Court handed down a controversial – though unanimous – Fourth Amendment decision in Whren v. United States, 517 U.S. 806, 819 (1996). Authored by the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, Whren involved a police seizure for a minor traffic offense that had every appearance of being pretextual. Although there was strong reason to believe that the real reason why the driver had been stopped was because he was suspected of carrying drugs, the Supreme Court held without equivocation that an officer’s subjective reasons for pulling someone over do not matter. Simply stated, if police officers “ha[ve] probable cause to believe that [a driver has] violated the traffic code,” then that fact alone “render[s] the stop reasonable under the Fourth Amendment.”
The Tennessee Supreme Court’s decisions in State v. Smithand State v. Davis represent straightforward extensions of this holding, although their potential for abuse is frightening. Both cases involved drivers who were pulled over for momentarily crossing over lane lines. On December 6, 2012, after being followed by a trooper without incident for approximately two-and-a-half miles, Defendant Linzey Smith was pulled over for “cross[ing] the fog line ‘by less than six inches’” as she negotiated a winding, sloping portion of a roadway. Similarly, on October 23, 2009, Defendant William Davis, Jr. was pulled over after his car’s two left wheels briefly drifted over the double yellow line splitting a two-lane road. After being pulled over, both drivers exhibited signs of intoxication, and each was ultimately arrested for DUI.
The question presented in both cases was whether law enforcement had the requisite level of suspicion to pull the drivers over in the first place. Both the Fourth Amendment and Article I, Section 7 of the Tennessee Constitution protect individuals from unreasonable seizures. There is also no doubt – at least in theory – that “an individual does not lose her constitutional rights against unreasonable seizures by driving a car.”[1] Further, longstanding caselaw establishes that “[a] police officer seizes a motorist when he turns on his blue lights in order to pull the motorist over.”[2] As a result, every traffic stop implicates an individual’s rights under the Fourth Amendment and the Tennessee Constitution, and all traffic stops must be justified by a minimum level of suspicion.
Generally speaking, two separate types of seizures are permitted under the Constitution. If law enforcement has probable cause to believe that an individual has committed a crime, then an officer may make a full-scale custodial arrest. Alternatively, if law enforcement has reasonable suspicion to believe that a criminal offense has been or is about to be committed, then an officer may initiate a brief investigatory stop to investigate the matter further.[3]
Notably, “[t]he level of reasonable suspicion required to support an investigatory stop is lower than that required for probable cause.”[4] Although non-technical and imprecise, federal judges estimate probable cause and reasonable suspicion to reflect certainty levels of roughly 45% and 31%, respectively.[5] However, both types of seizures must be justified by specific, articulable facts.
Tennessee law provides that crossing over a lane line even momentarily is a Class C misdemeanor that is punishable by up to 30 days in jail and a $50.00 fine.[6] Consequently, because the troopers in both Smith and Davis had at least reasonable suspicion to believe that the drivers had strayed from their lanes, the Tennessee Supreme Court held that in each instance, the traffic stops were constitutionally permissible. The Court also reiterated, however, that “slight weaving within one’s lane ordinarily will not support a stop under any standard.”[7]
In this regard, the Court’s holdings in Smith and Davis are unremarkable. Broadly considered, they simply reflect the U.S. Supreme Court’s now routine indication that: “If an officer has probable cause to believe that an individual has committed even a very minor criminal offense in his presence, he may, without violating the Fourth Amendment, arrest the offender.”[8] What is concerning, however, is their profound potential for abuse.
In affirming the legality of the stops at issue, the Tennessee Supreme Court candidly acknowledged the reality that nearly all drivers constantly deviate from their lanes. “We are confident that drivers in Tennessee [] cross lane lines ‘all the time,’” Justice Bivins’ unanimous opinion declares. Given this state of affairs, however, it is now a fact of life that virtually any driver in Tennessee can be stopped and jailed anywhere and at any time simply on an officer’s whim for no reason other than that it is impossible to drive perfectly within one’s lane at all times.[9] Additionally, although the Court went to great lengths to caution that its holdings were “not intended to provide law enforcement officers with ‘carte blanche’ to seize motorists every time they see a vehicle cross a [lane] line,” as a matter of practical reality, they do just that.
Any number of commentators have expressed serious reservations about this development in constitutional jurisprudence. Perhaps most troublingly, giving police nearly unchecked authority to seize any driver, anywhere, at any time is eerily reminiscent of the “general warrants” that were abused by the British during the pre-revolutionary period—abuses which gave rise to the very existence of the Fourth Amendment itself.[10]Moreover, Justice Bivins’ observation that “an officer has discretion as to when to stop drivers” – and his additional efforts to emphasize that “[w]e do not mean to require or imply that a stop should be made in all such instances” – should provide Tennesseans little comfort. If past is prologue, affording all law enforcement officers virtually unfettered discretion to stop, search and arrest any Tennessee driver anywhere and at any time is all but guaranteed to lead to profound abuse of authority and disproportionate enforcement against marginalized groups. In particular, poor minorities will continue to bear the brunt of minor traffic stops—often for purely pretextual reasons—while whiter, wealthier drivers remain unmolested. For obvious reasons, to those unlucky few who do not receive the benefit of an officer’s benevolent discretion not to pull them over every time they cross over a lane line, the Tennessee Supreme Court’s efforts to mollify the vast scope of its holdings will be of vanishingly small consolation.
[1] See Delaware v. Prouse, 440 U.S. 648, 662-63 (1979).
[2] See State v. Pulley, 863 S.W.2d 29, 30 (Tenn. 1993).
[3] State v. Binette, 33 S.W.3d 215, 218 (Tenn. 2000) (citing Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 20-21 (1968)).
[4] State v. Day, 263 S.W.3d 891, 902 (Tenn. 2008).
[5]See C.M.A. McCauliff, Burdens of Proof: Degrees of Belief, Quanta of Evidence, or Constitutional Guarantees?, 35 Vand. L. Rev. 1293, 1325-28 (1982).
[6]See generally Tenn. Code Ann. § 55-8-103 (2008) (“It is unlawful and, unless otherwise declared in this chapter and chapter 10, parts 1-5 of this title with respect to particular offenses, it is a Class C misdemeanor, for any person to do any act forbidden or fail to perform any act required in this chapter and chapter 10 of this title.”); Tenn. Code Ann. § 55-8-123(1) (“A vehicle shall be driven as nearly as practicable entirely within a single lane and shall not be moved from that lane until the driver has first ascertained that the movement can be made with safety;”); Tenn. Code Ann. § 40-35-111(e) (“The authorized terms of imprisonment and fines for misdemeanors are: . . . (3) Class C misdemeanor, not greater than thirty (30) days or a fine not to exceed fifty dollars ($50.00), or both, unless otherwise provided by statute.”).
[7] In this regard, the Court reaffirmed its prior holding in State v. Binette, 33 S.W.3d 215, 219-20 (Tenn. 2000).
[8] Atwater v. City of Lago Vista, 532 U.S. 318, 354, 121 S. Ct. 1536, 1557, 149 L. Ed. 2d 549 (2001).
[9] Barbara C. Salken, The General Warrant of the Twentieth Century? A Fourth Amendment Solution to Unchecked Discretion to Arrest for Traffic Offenses, 62 TEMP. L. REv. 221, 252-73 (1989).
[10]See id. See also Lewis R. Katz, “Lonesome Road”: Driving Without the Fourth Amendment, 36 Seattle U. L. Rev. 1413, 1413 (Spring, 2013) (“[o]ur streets and highways have become a police state where officers have virtually unchecked discretion about which cars to stop for the myriad of traffic offenses contained in state statutes and municipal ordinances”); David A. Moran, The New Fourth Amendment Vehicle Doctrine: Stop and Search Any Car at Any Time, 47 Vill. L. Rev. 815, 816 (2002) (“the police may, in their discretion, stop and search any vehicle at any time”); Elizabeth Ahern Wells, Note, Warrantless Traffic Stops: A Suspension of Constitutional Guarantees in Post September 11th America, 34 U. Tol. L. Rev. 899, 899 (Summer, 2003) (stating that traffic stops have “evolved into a veritable green light for police officers, resulting in a complete disregard for personal security”).
The Beacon Center of Tennessee has sued the city of Nashville over its recent Airbnb ordinance. According to its press release:
“In a major development, the Beacon Center today announced the formation of a brand new litigation arm, the Beacon Center Legal Foundation, and filed its first lawsuit. The Beacon Center is suing the city of Nashville on behalf of P.J. and Rachel Anderson. They are challenging unconstitutional regulations the city has placed on their ability to rent their home on Airbnb, a website that connects homeowners like them with guests visiting Nashville.”
The Beacon Center’s complaint, which is accessible here, alleges myriad constitutional violations of both the U.S. and Tennessee Constitution, including:
Violations of Article I, Section 8 of the Tennessee Constitution and the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (vagueness);
Violations of Article I, Section 19 of the Tennessee Constitution and the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (commercial speech);
Violations of Article I, Section 8 and Article XI, Section 8 of the Tennessee Constitution and the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (equal protection);
Violations of Article I, Section 8 of the Tennessee Constitution and the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (substantive due process);
Violation of Article I, Section 22 of the Tennessee Constitution (anti-monopoly); and
Violation of Article I, Section 7 of the Tennessee Constitution and the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (unreasonable administrative search).
