# City of Indianapolis v. Edmond > Supreme Court of the United States · November 28, 2000 · 531 U.S. 32 URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9434016 ## Case - **Full name:** CITY OF INDIANAPOLIS Et Al. v. EDMOND Et Al. - **Court:** Supreme Court of the United States - **Decided:** November 28, 2000 - **Citations:** 531 U.S. 32; 14 Fla. L. Weekly Fed. S 9; 2000 Colo. J. C.A.R. 6401; 69 U.S.L.W. 4009; 2000 Cal. Daily Op. Serv. 9549; 121 S. Ct. 447; 148 L. Ed. 2d 333; 2000 U.S. LEXIS 8084 - **Precedential status:** Published - **Opinion:** Dissent by Thomas - **Judges:** O'Connor, Stevens, Kennedy, Souter, Ginsburg, Breyer, Rehnquist, Thomas, Scalia - **Cited by:** 985 later opinions in the Frix Law Library ## Citator (automated) - **Yellow flag:** Reported overruled implicitly by Ferguson v. City of Charleston, 532 U.S. 67 (2001) — not on the Supreme Court's list. - Negative treatments: 2 - Distinguished by: 2 - Full citator and citing cases: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9434016 ## How later opinions describe it (automated extraction) - holding that while suspicionless stops at a highway checkpoint may be constitutional under the Fourth Amendment when "designed primarily to serve purposes closely related to the problems of policing the border or the necessity of ensuring roadway safety," highway stops that la… - stating that ”[t]he fact that officers walk a narcotics-detection dog around the exterior of each car at the Indianapolis checkpoints does not transform the seizure into a search.... [A]n exterior sniff of an automobile does not require entry into the car and is not designed t… - explaining that the border search line of cases and the previous traffic stop case, Michigan Dept. of State Police v. Sitz, 496 U.S. 444, 110 S.Ct. 2481, 110 L.Ed.2d 412 (1990), were special needs cases because they involved sus-picionless search programs "whose primary purpos… - finding unconstitutional a checkpoint with a primary purpose of interdicting illegal narcotics and stating that “[w]ithout drawing the line at roadblocks designed primarily to serve the general interest in crime control, the Fourth Amendment would do little to prevent such int… - explaining that “[o]f course, there are circumstances that may justify a law enforcement checkpoint where the primary purpose would otherwise, but for some emergency, relate to ordinary crime control,” and listing terrorist attacks or catching a dangerous fleeing criminal as e… ## Opinion text Justice Thomas, dissenting. Taken together, our decisions in Michigan Dept. of State Police v. Sitz, 496 U. S. 444 (1990), and United States v. Martinez-Fuerte, 428 U. S. 643 (1976), stand for the proposition that suspicionless roadblock seizures are constitutionally permissible if conducted according to a plan that limits the discretion of the officers conducting the stops. I am not convinced that Sitz and Martinez-Fuerte were correctly decided. Indeed, I rather doubt that the Framers of the Fourth Amendment would have considered “reasonable” a program of indiscriminate stops of individuals not suspected of wrongdoing. Respondents of Sitz and Martinez-Fuerte , and I am reluctant to consider such a step without the benefit of briefing and argument. For the reasons given by The Chief Justice, I believe that those cases compel upholding the program at issue here. I, therefore, join his opinion. --- Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9434016. Public record. Not legal advice.