Stephen Miller, a member of Cozen O’Connor’s Commercial Litigation Department discusses the Supreme Court’s examination of a facial Fourth Amendment challenge to Los Angeles Municipal Code Section 41.49, which authorized law enforcement officers to routinely inspect hotel guest registers without exigent circumstances, probable cause, or judicial supervision. The justices explored whether a hotel – not its guest – had an expectation of privacy under the Fourth Amendment in a hotel guest register, where the litigants agreed that maintaining the information contained in the register was mandated by law. The court also examined whether statutes and ordinances may ever be challenged under the Fourth Amendment on a facial basis.
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