Brendlin V. California - Opinion of The Court

Opinion of The Court

A person is "seized" for purposes of the Fourth Amendment when physical force or a show of authority terminates or restrains his freedom of movement. If the police's intent to restrain an individual is unclear, or if an individual's submission to a show of authority takes the form of passive acquiescence, a seizure does not occur unless a reasonable person would not feel free to leave in light of all the circumstances. If, however, the person has no desire to leave for reasons unrelated to the traffic stop, there is no seizure.

Before the Court's decision in this case, the law was clear that a traffic stop seized the driver of the car. The Court had also repeatedly suggested—but never formally held—that a traffic stop in fact seizes everyone in the vehicle. With its decision in this case, the Court expressly so held. "We think that in these circumstances any reasonable passenger would have understood the police officers to be exercising control to the point that no one in the car was free to depart without police permission."

A traffic stop necessarily curtails the freedom of movement of all within the vehicle, and a reasonable person riding in a stopped vehicle would know that some wrongdoing led the police to stop the vehicle. At the same time, any occupant of the vehicle cannot be sure of the reason for the stop. "If the likely wrongdoing is not the driving, the passenger will reasonably feel subject to suspicion owing to close association; but even when the wrongdoing is only bad driving, the passenger will expect to be subject to some scrutiny, and his attempt to leave the scene would be so obviously likely to prompt an objection from the officer that no reasonable passenger would feel free to leave in the first place." Moreover, no passenger could expect an officer to allow him to move around in ways that might jeopardize the officer's safety.

The California Supreme Court went astray by making three assumptions with which the Court disagreed. First, it reasoned that Brendlin was not the initial focus of the police's investigation, being concerned as they were with verifying the registration of the car, which Brendlin did not own. But the Court pointed out that this reasoning ignores the focus of the Fourth Amendment on what a reasonable person would believe, not the subjective intentions of the officers. Second, the California court reasoned that Brendlin was not in a position to submit to the officers' show of authority because only the driver of the car could do so. But the acts that constitute submission to a show of authority depend on what the person was doing beforehand. As a passenger in a vehicle, Brendlin could not affirmatively submit until the vehicle was stopped on the side of the road. Third, the California Supreme Court resisted the conclusion the Court drew because it feared that occupants of cars merely stuck in traffic would also be "seized" under a contrary holding. But the Court noted that "incidental restrictions on freedom of movement would not tend to affect an individual's sense of security and privacy in traveling in an automobile." Indeed, the California court's holding was a kind of incentive for the police to conduct "roving patrols" that would violate the Fourth Amendment rights of drivers.