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Pennsylvania's Top Court Unanimously Rejects Warrantless Searches of Private Land

The justices said the "open fields" doctrine, a sweeping exception to constitutional privacy protections, does not apply in the Keystone State.

Reason reporting 43 sentences analyzed 7,610 captured characters

On Tuesday, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court unanimously ruled that warrantless searches of land marked as private violate that state's constitution.

The seven justices agreed that the "open fields" doctrine, a sweeping exception to the Fourth Amendment that the U.S.

Supreme Court first announced in 1924, does not apply to the Pennsylvania Constitution's privacy protections.

"The Pennsylvania Supreme Court affirmed that private land is not public property," says Joshua Windham, a senior attorney at the Institute for Justice, which represented two hunting clubs that objected to warrantless surveillance of their land by the Pennsylvania Game Commission (PGC).

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