concluding that the surprise "warrantless inspections required by the Mine Safety and Health Act do not offend the Fourth Amendment" because there is a strong governmental interest with regard to "improving the health and safety conditions in the Nation's underground and surface mines"
How later courts described this case
- concluding that the surprise "warrantless inspections required by the Mine Safety and Health Act do not offend the Fourth Amendment" because there is a strong governmental interest with regard to "improving the health and safety conditions in the Nation's underground and surface mines"
- explaining that in a pervasively regulated business "the federal regulatory presence is sufficiently comprehensive and defined that the owner of commercial property cannot help but be aware that his property will be subject to periodic inspections undertaken for specific purposes"
- holding that warrantless inspections by federal mine inspectors of underground mines at least four times a year and surface mines at least twice a year to ensure compliance with health and safety standards required by federal legislation did not violate Fourth Amendment
- upholding a warrantless search under the administrative search exception in part because, in addition to being “specifically tailored” to protect the government’s interests, the regulations the Federal Mine Safety and Health Act of 1977 imposed were “sufficiently pervasive and defined that the owner of such a [mine] cannot help but be aware that he will be subject to effective inspection”
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
Justice Rehnquist,
concurring in the judgment.
Our prior cases hold that, absent consent or exigent circumstances, the government must obtain a warrant to conduct a search or effect an arrest in a private home. Steagald v. United States, 451 U. S. 204 (1981); Payton v. New York, 445 U. S. 573 (1980). This case, however, involves the search of commercial property. Though the proprietor of commercial property is protected from unreasonable intrusions by governmental agents, the Court correctly notes that “legislative schemes authorizing warrantless administrative searches of commercial property do not necessarily violate the Fourth Amendment.” Ante, at 598.
I do not believe, however, that the warrantless entry authorized by Congress in this case, § 103 (a) of the Federal Mine Safety and Health Act of 1977, can be justified by the Court’s rationale. The Court holds that warrantless searches of stone quarries are permitted because the mining industry has been pervasively regulated. But I have no doubt that had Congress enacted a criminal statute similar to that involved here — authorizing, for example, unannounced warrant-less searches of property reasonably thought to house unlawful drug activity — the warrantless search would be struck down under our existing Fourth Amendment line of decisions. This Court would invalidate the search despite the fact that Congress has a strong interest in regulating and preventing drug-related crime and has in fact pervasively regulated such crime for a longer period of time than it has regulated mining.
I nonetheless concur in the judgment of the Court. As far as I can tell, the stone quarry here was largely visible to the naked eye without entrance onto the company’s property. *609 As this Court has held, the “protection accorded by the Fourth Amendment to the people in their ‘persons, houses, papers, and effects,’ is not extended to the open fields.” Hester v. United States, 265 U. S. 57, 59 (1924). I necessarily reserve judgment on the extent to which the Fourth Amendment would prevent the implementation of § 103 (a) of the Act in the absence of the particular fact situation presented here.