The Court of Appeals' majority opinion would let government officials conduct warrantless drone surveillance with impunity—even though that surveillance violates the Fourth Amendment. Worse, its decision creates a bright line rule: the exclusionary rule simply does not apply when the offending officers violate your Fourth Amendment rights in the course of looking for civil rather than criminal violations. That line in the sand is unsupported by caselaw and, in effect, would leave little incentive for a vast array of government officials from committing even blatant constitutional violations.
“If the government wants to conduct intrusive surveillance like this, the Fourth Amendment requires that it get a warrant,” Institute for Justice Attorney Mike Greenberg said in a prepared statement. “The zoning authority's failure to even try to get one shows their indifference to Michiganders' constitutional rights.”