Warrantless Searches By Game Officials Ruled Unconstitutional By PA Supreme Court

By Peter Hall | Pennsylvania Capital-Star

Property owners have a greater right to privacy on their land under the Pennsylvania Constitution than under the U.S. Constitution, the state Supreme Court ruled Tuesday.

The decision is in favor of a pair of western Pennsylvania hunting clubs. They challenged the constitutionality of two provisions in the Game and Wildlife Code that permitted state game wardens to enter private land, but not homes or buildings, without warrants.

“This is a victory for all landowners in Pennsylvania,” said Frank Stockdale, president of the Punxsutawney Hunting Club in a release. “Generations of members have come to this club to relax, to bond, to laugh, and to find peace. It’s a private place … that’s what makes it so special. Today, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court honored that privacy.”

The Institute for Justice, a public interest law firm, represented the clubs.

“Today, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court affirmed that private land is not public property. It’s yours, and that means you get to decide who enters it. If government officials want to invade your posted land without your consent and spy on you, they need to get a warrant,” said Joshua Windham, a senior attorney at Institute for Justice.

The state attorney general’s office, which represented the Game Commission, declined to comment.

In the summer of 2013, a state wildlife officer accused a Pitch Pine Hunting Club member of illegally feeding bears outside a cabin on the 1,100 acre property. The officer admitted that he had been watching the member and his guests for several days to catch violations, but ultimately left without citing anyone.

After that and other interactions with wildlife officials, members of the Pitch Pine Hunting Club and the nearby Punxsutawney Hunting Club in Clearfield County sued the Pennsylvania Game Commission, asking the Commonwealth Court to find the laws unconstitutional. 

The Game and Wildlife Code provisions allowing warrantless searches are enabled by a 1924 U.S. Supreme Court decision establishing that Fourth Amendment protection against warrantless searches does not extend to “open fields,” such as farmland or woodland well away from dwellings.

The Commonwealth Court ruled against the hunting clubs in 2023 and they appealed to the state’s highest court. 

In the lead opinion for the unanimous Supreme Court, Justice Kevin Brobson said the court’s own 2007 decision in a case called Commonwealth v. Russo, upholding the warrantless search provisions, was decided incorrectly. 

“We conclude that slavish adherence to our decision in Russo must give way to the greater privacy and property protections afforded under Article I, Section 8 of our state charter,” Brobson said. “As our jurisprudence in this area has evolved, the Court’s reasoning and result in Russo have not aged well.”

Article I, Section 8 of the Pennsylvania Constitution is roughly equivalent to the U.S. Constitution’s Fourth Amendment, establishing the right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure. The Supreme Court’s ruling centers on a slight difference in the wording of the two.

Whereas the Fourth Amendment protects the people’s right to be “secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects” from unreasonable searches and seizures, the state constitution uses the word “possessions” in the place of “effects.”

In the Russo decision, the state Supreme Court upheld the conviction of a hunter who had been charged with baiting bears after he reported bagging a black bear within minutes of the season opening. 

The court rejected the hunter’s claims the searches that revealed evidence of baiting were constitutionally invalid. In its analysis of the Article I, Section 8 protections the court reasoned that the word “possessions” was equivalent to the word “effects,” in meaning personal property, not real property. Therefore, the Open Fields Doctrine established by the 1924 U.S. Supreme Court ruling was not barred under the state constitution.

The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday, however, that the court erred in finding that the term “possessions” is limited to personal items, and that historically, Pennsylvania law has considered “possessions” to include land.

“Article I, Section 8 provides Pennsylvania citizens with greater protection than the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution as it relates to the open fields of any landowner that has demonstrated a reasonable expectation of privacy by taking sufficient steps to exclude intruders therefrom,” Brobson wrote. 

“Accordingly, the Commission’s officers, employees, and representatives, as well as any other government officials, must obtain a warrant based upon probable cause or satisfy one of the recognized exceptions to the warrant requirement before entering such property,” the court said.

Pennsylvania Capital-Star is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Pennsylvania Capital-Star maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Tim Lambert for questions: info@penncapital-star.com.