In Cuevas v. de Roco, published today, the Ninth Circuit held that police officers who enter a home in search of a parolee, without a warrant and without probable cause that the parolee is there, violate the Fourth Amendment rights of the home's inhabitants. The initial intrusion in Cuevas occurred when a plainclothes parole officer, accompanied by sheriff's deputies, stuck his foot in the home's door as the homeowner attempted to close it, thinking that the officer was a home-invasion robber. Deputies who subsequently entered in response to the female homeowner's screams did not violate the owners' due process rights; they had probable cause and exigent circumstances that permitted them to enter without a warrant.
In Fogel v. Collins, also published today, the Ninth Circuit held that police officers violated the First Amendment rights of a van owner when they arrested him and impounded his van; but that the officers were entitled to qualified immunity. The van was emblazoned with provocative political and satirical statements, including, one stating he was a suicide bomber communist terrorist. The officers searched the van for a bomb, did not find one, and did not believe he had one. They nevertheless arrested the owner for threatening a crime involving great bodily injury; for false report of a hidden bomb; and for use of offensive language in a public place. The Ninth Circuit ruled that political rhetoric or hyperbole, particularly when not aimed at a particular person, is protected speech. The Ninth Circuit declined to rule whether an objective or subjective standard applied to judging the speech protected, because it found the speech protected under either standard. Anyone who saw the van, the Ninth Circuit found, would not have taken the slogans on it seriously. But it found the officers entitled to qualified immunity, because there was no clearly-established law at the time on whether post-9/11 satiric bomb threats were protected by the First Amendment.