{"id":487,"date":"2026-08-07T14:46:21","date_gmt":"2026-08-07T14:46:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/americanservicereview.com\/?p=487"},"modified":"2026-08-07T14:46:21","modified_gmt":"2026-08-07T14:46:21","slug":"pete-buttigieg-the-supreme-court-and-the-fourth-amendment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/americanservicereview.com\/?p=487","title":{"rendered":"Pete Buttigieg, the Supreme Court, and the Fourth Amendment"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Please note that SCOTUS Outside Opinions constitute the views of outside contributors and do not\u00a0necessarily\u00a0reflect the opinions of SCOTUSblog or its staff.<\/em><\/p>\n

Read more President Trump signs new birthright citizenship and \u201cbirth tourism\u201d orders<\/a><\/p>\n

In late June, presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg described in a Substack post how he had endured every parent\u2019s nightmare. Following a knock at the door of his home in Michigan, he encountered a police officer with an investigator from Child Protective Services. They asked to talk with him, and he invited them into his house. This is how Buttigieg then described what they said:<\/p>\n

They explained that there had been an allegation against me, that it concerned our four-year-old twins, and that a forensic interview had been arranged for the children the following day. I could not be present at the children\u2019s interview, nor could any family member sit in. Afterwards, they would come back and interview me. And only then would they tell me anything about the nature of the allegation.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But they weren\u2019t finished with their demands. \u201cI was not to be alone around the children, at least until the interview took place the next day. They asked if I had relatives nearby or could perhaps stay at a hotel for the night.\u201d When the twins came home with his husband Chasten, Buttigieg allowed them to meet the police officer and the investigator and then agreed to send their children to their grandparents\u2019 house. One can imagine the dread and terror Buttigieg (and Chasten) felt waiting out this ordeal.<\/p>\n

The next day, the investigator talked to the children, and then to Buttigieg, revealing what he had been accused of:<\/p>\n

An anonymous caller had contacted CPS. The caller said that he had spoken to a woman who claimed to have met me at a conference several years ago in Alabama, where she said I told her that I had committed unspeakable violent crimes, and the caller believed my children were still at risk.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Buttigieg answered the police questions, explaining that he had never attended the conference in Alabama and had never talked to the woman. The authorities said they had not found \u201canything to substantiate the allegation,\u201d so he could once again be around his children. The CPS worker looked around the house to make sure there was adequate food in the kitchen, and checked out the kids\u2019 bedroom, which Buttigieg says was \u201cstandard procedure.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to The Washington Post, the Michigan attorney general\u2019s office is now reviewing this matter to understand how its investigation, spurred by an anonymous tipster, got so far out of hand and whether this was a politically-motivated attack to harass Buttigieg and his family. Nevertheless, based on Supreme Court authority on the Fourth Amendment, this all could have been avoided in the first place. I wanted to use this column to explain why. <\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

To back up a bit, what Buttigieg experienced is not unheard of: From my time working at the Home School Legal Defense Association, I frequently came across Fourth Amendment issues concerning CPS. (Home school families were frequent victims of anonymous tips to CPS accusing families of abusing or neglecting their children.) What\u2019s more, to state the obvious, child abuse and neglect are horrible crimes that the authorities should prosecute. And most social workers are trying to do their best under extremely difficult conditions.<\/p>\n

But the Constitution \u2013 and the Supreme Court\u2019s Fourth Amendment jurisprudence \u2013 sets limits on what the authorities can do to fight crime. The police could fight child abuse (with some success!) by entering every house in America where children reside and force their parents or guardians to prove they are not abusing or neglecting these children, even when there is no reasonable basis for suspecting this in a particular household. Of course, if the police did systematic or even random searches of houses in general, they could turn up all sorts of criminal activity. We all would be \u201csafer,\u201d but we would also lack liberty. As the Supreme Court has made clear, the Fourth Amendment balances how the police and social workers conduct their investigations.<\/p>\n

Read more What is \u201ctrapped in amber\u201d? An originalist explanation<\/a><\/p>\n

The amendment itself states that people are protected from \u201cunreasonable searches and seizures\u201d by the government of their \u201cpersons, houses, papers and effects\u201d without a search warrant. In turn, the court has stated multiple times, most recently in Case v. Montana<\/em>, that \u201c[i]t is a basic principle of Fourth Amendment law that searches and seizures inside a home without a warrant are presumptively unreasonable.\u201d To get a search warrant, the government must go to a magistrate and show evidence indicating probable cause of criminal activity. The Supreme Court has ruled that an anonymous tip making allegations against someone, without more evidence, is not <\/em>sufficient evidence to obtain a search warrant.<\/p>\n

The Supreme Court has also recognized that the government agent does not need a search warrant when an occupant of the house consents to the search. This means that social workers may try and persuade or pressure the parent to consent. Nor are the social worker or the police required to give a Miranda<\/em>-type warning such as \u201cbecause we don\u2019t have a warrant, you are free to say no to our request that you consent to a search of your home.\u201d<\/p>\n

From my experience, this is typically how CPS investigators get access to one\u2019s home. Such persons know their mere presence at the parents\u2019 front door \u2013 especially if there is a police officer with them \u2013 will intimidate or frighten many parents into agreeing to nearly anything they ask for. The parent then faces a difficult dilemma. Say yes to the search, and they have allowed strangers into their home, to inspect their property and potentially upend their lives. Say no, and the CPS might take my kids (or so the parent thinks). No parent wants that. But the social worker is making a calculated bluff, because she knows she has no evidence to get a search warrant, and zero evidence to justify a court order removing children from the home. The social worker realizes that if\u00a0the parent consents to her entering the house to look around and talk to the children, she just might find evidence of wrongdoing.<\/p>\n

Some might wonder whether this presents a situation involving so-called \u201cexigent circumstances\u201d justifying a warrantless search. That was certainly not the case with Buttigieg\u2019s family, however. As the Supreme Court explained in 2013\u2019s Missouri v. McNeely<\/em>, \u201cexigent circumstances\u201d are extreme situations that require immediate action: \u201cA variety of circumstances may give rise to an exigency sufficient to justify a warrantless search, including law enforcement\u2019s need to provide emergency assistance to an occupant of the a home \u2026 engage in \u2018hot pursuit\u2019 of a fleeing suspect \u2026 or enter a burning building to put out a fire and investigate its cause,\u201d or to \u201cprevent the imminent destruction of evidence.\u201d <\/p>\n

None of that existed here. The anonymous tipster had allegedly talked to Buttigieg \u201cseveral years ago\u201d at the conference. CPS had no real evidence that anything bad was happening at that moment. Rather, Buttigieg was standing in front of them, and the children were not home. The social worker may well have been following her agency\u2019s standard protocols, but they do not override one\u2019s Fourth Amendment rights.<\/p>\n

So what would my advice to Buttigieg have been based on Supreme Court precedent? Simple: When social workers or police knock on your door requesting to enter your house to interview your children and to look around, ask them, \u201cdo you have a search warrant?\u201d If they say no, tell them they cannot enter your house and then consult your attorney. If the police and social workers barge into the house without a warrant, they should face a federal civil rights lawsuit for damages for violating your Fourth Amendment rights.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

I am politically conservative, so I doubt that I would ever vote for Buttigieg. But he is an American, and all Americans are protected by the Constitution. The Supreme Court has made clear that if you lack probable cause, you cannot get a warrant to search a family\u2019s home. As the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit stated in Calabretta v. Floyd<\/em>, a case against a social worker and a police officer who entered a house without a warrant based on a phone call alleging child abuse, \u201c[t]he government’s interest in the welfare of children embraces not only protecting children from physical abuse, but also protecting children\u2019s interest in the privacy and dignity of their homes and in the lawfully exercised authority of their parents.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more Beyond the swing justice: majority makers, dissent bridges, and coalition drift on the Supreme Court<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Please note that SCOTUS Outside Opinions constitute the views of outside contributors and do not\u00a0necessarily\u00a0reflect the opinions of SCOTUSblog or its staff. Read more President Trump signs new birthright citizenship and \u201cbirth tourism\u201d orders In late June, presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg described in a Substack post how he had endured every parent\u2019s nightmare. Following a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":278,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-487","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-commentary","category-scotus-outside-opinions"],"yoast_head":"\nPete Buttigieg, the Supreme Court, and the Fourth Amendment - American Service Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/americanservicereview.com\/?p=487\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Pete Buttigieg, the Supreme Court, and the Fourth Amendment - American Service Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Please note that SCOTUS Outside Opinions constitute the views of outside contributors and do not\u00a0necessarily\u00a0reflect the opinions of SCOTUSblog or its staff. 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