EDITORIAL: A man's home is his curtilage

Today’s word is “curtilage,” which Webster’s defines as the ground and buildings immediately surrounding a home. Curtilage was invoked last week when the Supreme Court made it a little harder for cops to bring police dogs onto a suspect’s property to sniff out evidence. They’ll have to get a search warrant first.
The ruling was a victory for the idea, anchored firmly in the Bill of Rights, that a person should be shielded in his home from unreasonable government searches.
Here’s the background: In December 2006, police went to a Miami area house after receiving a tip that the occupant was growing marijuana. A police dog named Franky padded onto the porch and sniffed pot at the base of the front door. The cops got a search warrant, found marijuana inside and jailed the pot grower. But the suspect’s lawyer challenged the search, arguing that Franky’s sniff outside the front door was an unconstitutional intrusion.
The Florida Supreme Court agreed. So did the U.S. Supreme Court.
Justice Antonin Scalia wrote for the majority: “The police cannot, without a warrant based on probable cause, hang around on the lawn or in the side garden, trawling for evidence and perhaps peering into the windows of the home. And the officers here had all four of their feet and all four of their companion’s (feet) planted firmly on that curtilage — the front porch is the classic example of an area intimately associated with the life of the home.”
Justice Scalia is a rock-solid conservative. The majority in the 5-4 ruling consisted of another established conservative, Clarence Thomas, as well as some of the court’s liberal voices.
“Was this activity a trespass? Yes, as the court holds today,” Justice Elena Kagan wrote about the authorities’ tactic of having Franky nose around outside the suspect’s house. “Was it also an invasion of privacy? Yes, that as well.”
Cops shouldn’t trespass and invade people’s privacy just because they think a drug-sniffing dog has given them the go-ahead. The Supreme Court made the right decision.