Minnesota’s Implied Consent law will take center stage next month when a local case makes its way to the United States Supreme Court.
The United States Supreme Court will hear the case of William Bernard, a local man who was suspected of driving drunk back in 2012. Bernard refused all tests to determine his blood alcohol content, and he was charged under Minnesota’s Implied Consent law, which states that refusal to submit to a warrantless test is a crime in and of itself. Arguing that the Implied Consent law is in direct violation of a person’s 4th Amendment protections, Bernard took his case to the Minnesota Supreme Court, where justices ruled that the test-refusal law was constitutional as a “search incident to an arrest.” The US Supreme Court will re-examine the state’s ruling and the law when they convene on April 20.
Reasonable Expectation of Privacy
The Implied Consent law has long been scrutinized by anyone who believes that individuals should have a reasonable expectation of privacy. Those in favor of the law state that driving is a privilege and thus drivers should forfeit certain 4th Amendment rights in order to get behind the wheel. But let’s look at another aspect of life. Isn’t home ownership a privilege? No reasonable person would argue that a cop could just show up on your front door and demand to search your home for drugs. If the cop wanted to enter the premise, he would either need your permission or a warrant from a judge. Refusing entry to your home, without permission or a warrant, would never be met with criminal charges in this instance.
Yet that’s exactly where we sit with the Implied Consent law. A driver should not be met with criminal charges for refusing to submit to a warrantless and unauthorized search of their persons. It’s as simple as that.
We’re not arguing that police should not be able to collect BAC evidence from suspected drunk drivers. We’re just asking that they follow due process and obtain a warrant or permission from the suspect. The Minnesota Supreme Court’s ruling that searches are legal so long as they are “incident to an arrest” is contradictory to the protections guaranteed by our constitution. Hopefully the US Supreme Court can see that.
One underlying issue with the case is that it stands to impact thousands of past cases. Should the US Supreme Court rule that Minnesota’s Implied Consent law is unconstitutional, any person who submitted to a breath test under the pretense that they would be charged with a crime (and a yearlong forfeiture of their license) solely for refusing to take the test would have new grounds to appeal their case. That shouldn’t deter the US Supreme Court from issuing a fair ruling, but it wouldn’t be surprising if they dug a little deeper in order to find an exception to keep the law in place so as not to disturb the thousands of past DUI cases. Here’s hoping they do the right thing and stand with the 4th Amendment.
