Suspicionless Searches: U.S. v. King and the Ninth Circuit’s Dismissal of the Probationer-Parolee Distinction

Abstract

In U.S. v. King, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit considered whether a suspicionless search of a probationer, conducted pursuant to a condition of his probation, violated the Fourth Amendment. The Ninth Circuit held that the search did not violate the Fourth Amendment because legitimate governmental interests outweighed the probationer’s privacy interest. In conducting the balancing test, however, the court failed to give significance to the distinction between probationers and parolees for Fourth Amendment purposes and used an analysis that overrides any individual privacy interest that a probationer may have.