Washington State Crashes Roadblocks

Roadblocks have hit the skids in the Washington state legislature.

Lawmakers in Olympia, Wash. rebuked Gov. Christine Gregoire’s push to follow the lead of 41 other states’ measure to allow roadblocks in stemming drunk driving. Rep. Steve Kirby, D-Tacoma voted on behalf of his constituents, who thought such a measure was invasive and illegal. “To me, this is a step away from letting the police stop us on the streets and search our pockets and our backpacks,” Kirby said.

Instead, Washington State will rely on its state constitution, which is more concerned with protecting the privacy rights of its citizens than catching potential drunk drivers.

The Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

That is from the Fourth Amendment, what keeps the police from entering your house for no apparent reason. The police can in fact enter your house and conduct a search but they first need a court order signed by a judge.

You would assume the Fourth Amendment would apply to people’s cars and you would be right. The police cannot legally search a car for no reason in a parking lot, unless they have “probable cause.” If police notice a car with a marijuana leaf painted on the hood, and the license plate reads “DRUGDEALR,” and there is funny-smelling smoke coming out of the windows, that is probable cause. But if the car is a minivan with nothing strange about its appearance, the police can’t search it because they feel like it.

Supreme Court Has Its Own Interpretation

The United States Supreme Court in Michigan v. Sitz found while sobriety checkpoints were apparent violations of the Fourth Amendment, they were only ”minor” violations. Permitting police to stop citizens without reason to believe they had done anything wrong, Chief Justice Rehnquist said, was permissible in view of the government’s ongoing “War on Drunk Driving.”

The dissenting opinions, led by Justice Brennan, stated that "the findings of the trial court, based on an extensive record and affirmed by the Michigan Court of Appeals, indicate that the net effect of sobriety checkpoints on traffic safety is infinitesimal and possibly negative." So aside from not really working, they also violate our fourth amendment rights.

As stated by Justice Brennan: "That stopping every car might make it easier to prevent drunken driving ... is an insufficient justification for abandoning the requirement of individualized suspicion.”

As constitutionally correct as Justice Brennan was, he was still in the dissenting opinion, so on a federal level, sobriety checkpoints are okay. But there are still states that view sobriety checkpoints as unconstitutional. Unfortunately, Virginia isn’t one of them.