In May, the Tennessee Court of Appeals ruled against the state after wildlife agencies invaded private land and installed cameras looking for hunting violations. This week, the Tennessee Attorney General’s Office declined to appeal, meaning the ruling is upheld. This is a good first step in reclaiming Americans’ property rights.
State law allows officials from the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency (TWRA) or any other state or federal wildlife agency to “enter outside buildings, posted or otherwise on any property” to “enforce all laws relating to wildlife.” as reason TWRA agents, first reported in 2022, interpreted the directive as indiscriminate trespassing on private lands; in at least two cases, agents then coordinated with federal wildlife officials to trespass without a warrant, the owner’s knowledge or permission. Install trail cameras. A man found a camera on his land, removed it, then agents searched his home and arrested him for “theft of government property.”
Under Supreme Court precedent dating back to Prohibition cases a century ago, “open fields” do not enjoy the same constitutional protections as personal homes and “curtilages” (the area surrounding a home). exist Hester v. United States (1924), Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote, “The protection afforded by the Fourth Amendment to the ‘persons, houses, papers, and effects’ of the people does not extend to the open domain.”
Two Tennessee property owners filed a lawsuit in 2022 claiming the state law violated the Tennessee Constitution. Article I, Section 7 of the Tennessee Constitution uses very similar language to the Fourth Amendment—just replacing “property” with “property”—but goes a step further, adding “a general authority that officers may be ordered to search Suspicious location”. The arrest of any unnamed person without evidence of a crime committed, or whose crime is not specifically described and supported by evidence, is a danger to liberty and should not be approved. “
The district court agreed, holding that “Tennessee’s prohibition on unreasonable searches provides broader security protections for personal real property than its federal counterparts.”
The state appealed the ruling, and in May 2024, the Tennessee Court of Appeals upheld the district court’s decision. While the appeals court did not find the state law unconstitutional, as did the district court, it still held that the TWRA’s application of the law “represents a troubling assertion of authority on behalf of the government that violates the very foundations of search protections. The government’s arbitrariness of the American legal tradition intervention, especially in Tennessee.
Tennessee statutes provide for appeals to the state Supreme Court “60 days after the judgment is entered.” The state’s deadline to appeal the decision in the case passed on July 9. reasonRequest for comment.
The ruling is good news for Tennesseans, who decided to uphold the verdict. It provides further protection against unwarranted intrusion and surveillance by government agents. But this is just the first step in undoing a century of harmful jurisprudence.
After all, the ruling only applied to state constitutions, leaving the open domain principle unaffected. Therefore, any federal wildlife enforcement officer can still enter your land with impunity and even install cameras at will, as long as they stay away from your home.
The practice also varies by state law. as reason According to 2022 records, some states will only install cameras on private property with a search warrant or the owner’s permission, while others claim to have free access to private land and install cameras.
All is not lost: Tennessee joins several other states in affirming stricter privacy protections than the Fourth Amendment allows. As early as 1970, the Mississippi Supreme Court ruled Davidson v. State”, “This right to be free from invasion of privacy by government officials is a fundamental freedom in our federal and state constitutional systems. In 2018, the Vermont Supreme Court affirmed State v. Dupuis “The Vermont Constitution provides greater protection for ‘open lands’ than the U.S. Constitution, requiring law enforcement officers to obtain a search warrant before searching open lands when the landowner demonstrates a desire for privacy.”