Case of the Baltimore Rats

A complaint about rats in the neighborhood led William Gentry, a Baltimore health-department inspector, from house to house on Baltimore's Reisterstown Road until he came to the home of one Aaron D. Frank. One quick look showed the Frank house to be in "an extreme state of decay," and disclosed--as health-department officialese put it--a backyard pile of "rodent feces mixed with straw and trash and debris to approximately half a ton." But Aaron Frank refused to let the inspector in the house without a warrant. After Inspector Gentry was kept out a second time, Householder Frank was fined $20, under a 158-year-old city ordinance giving health officers the right of daytime inspection without a warrant.

No Midnight Knock. Last week the U.S. Supreme Court, by the tightest of decisions (5-4), upheld the fine and the 1801 Baltimore ordinance, and ruled that the health inspector's visit did not violate the Fourth Amendment's guaranteed "right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures."

Historically, wrote Justice Felix Frankfurter for the majority (Justices Tom Clark, John Marshall Harlan, Charles Evans Whittaker, Potter Stewart), the constitutional protections of privacy were designed to prevent officials from seizing evidence to be used against the householder in a criminal case without due process of law. "Giving the fullest scope to this constitutional right to privacy, its protection cannot be here invoked . . . No evidence for criminal prosecution is sought to be seized . . . Here was no midnight knock on the door but an orderly visit in the middle of the afternoon . . . Time and experience have forcefully taught that the power to inspect dwelling places . . . is of indispensable importance to the maintenance of community health, a power that would be greatly hobbled by the blanket requirement of the safeguards for a search of evidence of criminal acts."

No Search Warrant. Not so, held the dissenters, in an opinion written by Justice William O. Douglas (and joined in by Chief Justice Earl Warren, Associate Justices Hugo Black and William J. Brennan Jr.): "The decision today greatly dilutes the right of privacy which every homeowner had the right to believe was part of our American heritage. We witness indeed an inquest over a substantial part of the Fourth Amendment."

Apart from the fact that Inspector Gentry had ample time to secure a search warrant in the hours between his two visits to the house, noted Justice Douglas, a basic right was denied Citizen Frank. "One invasion of privacy by an official of Government can be as oppressive as another. Health inspections are important. But they are hardly more important than the search for narcotics peddlers, rapists, kidnapers, murderers and other criminal elements"--all covered, except in emergency cases, by search-warrant procedure.

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