Soldal v. Cook County

In Soldal v. Cook County, 506 U.S. 56, 72 (1992), the U.S. Supreme Court held that the Fourth Amendment protects against the removal of one's mobile home with the approval of governmental officials.

This precedent is significant because it establishes that the Fourth Amendment protects property in addition to privacy:

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We thus are unconvinced that any of the Court's prior cases supports the view that the Fourth Amendment protects against unreasonable seizures of property only where privacy or liberty is also implicated. What is more, our "plain view" decisions make untenable such a construction of the Amendment.

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Id. at 65. Justice White, delivering the opinion for a unanimous court, held that:

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the complaint here alleges that respondents, acting under color of state law, dispossessed the Soldals of their trailer home by physically tearing it from its foundation and towing it to another lot. Taking these allegations as true, this was no "garden-variety" landlord-tenant or commercial dispute. The facts alleged suffice to constitute a "seizure" within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment, for they plainly implicate the interests protected by that provision.

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Id. at 72.

Justice Scalia, for a 5-4 portion of his decision for a Court unanimous in judgment, cited this case approvingly in finding that a warrantless attachment of a GPS device to a suspect's car violated the Fourth Amendment:

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More recently, in Soldal v. Cook County, 506 U.S. 56, 113 S. Ct. 538, 121 L. Ed. 2d 450 (1992), the Court unanimously rejected the argument that although a “seizure” had occurred “in a 'technical' sense” when a trailer home was forcibly removed, id., at 62, 113 S. Ct. 538, 121 L. Ed. 2d 450, no Fourth Amendment violation occurred because law enforcement had not “invade[d] the [individuals'] privacy,” id., at 60, 113 S. Ct. 538, 121 L. Ed. 2d 450.

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United States v. Jones, 565 U.S. 400, 407, 132 S. Ct. 945, 951 (2012).