Your Home at Risk: Warrantless Police Raids and Searches Could Soon Be on the Rise

WASHINGTON, DC — The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to protect homeowners from warrantless searches by police based merely on a suspicion that a person on probation or parole resides on the premises.

In refusing to hear an appeal in Bailey v. Arkansas, the Supreme Court let stand a lower court ruling that could, as Rutherford Institute attorneys warned in their amicus brief, establish a slippery slope that allows police to carry out warrantless searches when police merely suspect but do not know or have probable cause to believe that a probationer lives on the premises.

“This case is about a creeping erosion of our Fourth Amendment rights that threatens every homeowner in America,” said constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute and author of Battlefield America: The War on the American People. “We’re on a slippery slope towards a society where police can invade any home based on nothing more than a hunch. It’s an affront to the Constitution and a danger to us all.”

Under Arkansas Code § 16–93–106, persons who are placed on supervised probation or parole are required to agree to a waiver that allows any law enforcement officer to conduct a warrantless search of their person, residence, electronic device, or motor…