finding consent to search racetrack dormitories where New York racing industry employees lived involuntary where the employment license application the employees signed included notice of possible room searches but there was no evidence that employees knew of right to refuse consent
How later courts described this case
- finding consent to search racetrack dormitories where New York racing industry employees lived involuntary where the employment license application the employees signed included notice of possible room searches but there was no evidence that employees knew of right to refuse consent
- concluding that “acquiescence to a blanket waiver of the right to object to any future searches of the plaintiffs’ residences” as a condition of receiving a commercial license cannot be treated as consent in the Fourth Amendment context
- concluding 12 that the signing of a license application, which contained an express waiver of the right to object to searches, did not constitute an effective consent to residential searches
- rejecting an assertion that racetrack employees, by signing a license with a “a blanket waiver of the right to object to any future searches,” gave an effective consent to search their dormitory rooms, because “there [was] no evidence demonstrating that the plaintiffs were aware of their right to refuse to give consent to this unconstitutional search or indeed whether they could refuse and still obtain employment”
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
VAN GRAAFEILAND, Judge.
Supplemental dissent:
When I wrote my dissent to my colleague’s amended majority opinion, I expressed a concern that I might be “wearing out my welcome.” Anobile v. Pelligrino, 284 F.3d 104, 123 (2d Cir.2002). Accordingly, I will limit my hopefully final comments to the following question:
If the contents of the plaintiffs cubicle included a terrorist bomb powerful enough to demolish the track’s grandstand, would my colleagues continue to insist that the cubicle was the plaintiffs “home”?