UNITED STATES V. SCOTT, 2025 WL 2505759 (7th Cir. 2025)
What’s the best way to not to have an expectation of privacy in a public restroom? Step one: Act suspiciously. Step 2: Get caught reaching for a gun in an unlocked bathroom stall.
In the Chicago area, police officers visited a gas station mini-mart to obtain surveillance footage associated with a robbery that occurred earlier in the day. As the officers walked up to entrance, they saw LaPierre Scott glance toward them and then head inside. Scott walked to the single-occupancy restrooms, bypassed the first and entered the second, which had an “Out of Order” sign on the door. Scott did not lock the restroom after entering.
Curious, the officers followed Scott and found him standing on the handicap grab bars beside the toilet, reaching up through a dislodged tile in the ceiling.
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After an officer reached into the ceiling and found a gun, they arrested Scott. In a search incident to arrest, the officers found cash and illegal drugs (including ecstasy, methamphetamine, and marijuana). Scott asked the trial court to suppress the evidence. The prosecutor acknowledged the officers lacked probable cause or reasonable suspicion to believe Scott had committed a crime at the time they entered the restroom.
For Fourth Amendment purposes, a “search” is any government activity that intrudes on a legitimate expectation of privacy. Thus, the question is whether Scott had any expectation of privacy for an item hidden in the ceiling of a broken public restroom.
To answer this question, the court considered “(1) whether the defendant had a possessory or ownership interest in the thing seized or the place searched, (2) whether he had the right to exclude others from that place, (3) whether he exhibited a subjective expectation that it would remain free from governmental invasion, (4) whether he took normal precautions to maintain his privacy, and (5) whether he was legitimately on the premises.”
Surprise: The court of appeals held that Scott did not have a subjective or objectively reasonable expectation of privacy in the unlocked, out-of-order restroom, so the officers’ entry did not constitute a search under the Fourth Amendment. Enough said.
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