California v. Greenwood

Background

In Laguna Beach, police investigators received tips and neighbor complaints that a resident, Greenwood, might be trafficking drugs. Officers watched the house, then asked the regular trash collector to pick up Greenwood’s opaque plastic bags and hand them over. Officers searched the bags, found items suggesting drug use, and used that information to get search warrants for Greenwood’s home. The searches of the home turned up illegal drugs and led to arrests. A California court relied on a prior state decision to suppress the trash evidence and dismissed the charges.

Reasoning

The central question was whether the Fourth Amendment forbids warrantless searches of garbage left for collection outside the home’s curtilage. The Court applied the familiar test: a person must have a private expectation that society is prepared to recognize as reasonable. The majority concluded that people who put garbage in plastic bags at the curb expose it to animals, scavengers, snoops, and the trash collector, and therefore lack a reasonable expectation of privacy. The Court relied on prior cases where information voluntarily given to third parties or plainly observable by the public was not protected and noted that many lower courts had rejected a privacy protection for curbside trash. The Court also rejected arguments that state law protections or state rules about excluding evidence should change the federal Fourth Amendment analysis.

Real world impact

The ruling allows police to obtain curbside trash from collectors and use its contents to support warrants or investigations without a federal constitutional bar. Evidence from such trash will generally not be suppressed under the Fourth Amendment, though state law choices about remedies remain separate.

Dissents or concurrances

Justice Brennan, joined by Justice Marshall, dissented, arguing sealed opaque trash bags are like other closed containers and deserve Fourth Amendment protection because they reveal intimate details and social norms and local rules often protect trash privacy.