Warrantless Body Searches

In 2016, the Court decided Birchfield v. North Dakata, which held: "The Fourth Amendment permits warrantless breath tests incident to arrests for drunk driving but not warrantless blood tests." Judgment was a 7-1. Justice Alito wrote for the majority.

This map goes from Birchfield back to Skinner v. Railway Labor Executives. This choice of network anchor was based on this quote from Birchfield: "For all these reasons, we reiterate what we said in Skinner: A breath test does not 'implicat[e] significant privacy concerns.'' 489 U. S., at 626… Blood tests are a different matter. They 'require piercing the skin' and extract a part of the subject’s body. Skinner, at 625"

This network thus features cases that develop the "search" concept in Fourth Amendment jurisprudence. Please note that the embedded map shows the three-degree network using a random projection. Click the map to view other options.