Michigan v. Michael Frederick, et al.

This Court has held that “[w]hen law enforcement officers who are not armed with a warrant knock on a door, they do no more than any private citizen might do.” Kentucky v King, 563 US 452, 469–70; 131 S Ct 1849; 179 LEd2d 865 (2011). Two years later, this Court noted “the unsurprising proposition that [law enforcement] officers could have lawfully approached [a] home to knock on the front door in hopes of speaking with [the occupant].” Florida v Jardines, 569 US 1, 8 n 1; 133 S Ct 1409; 185 LEd2d 495 (2013). In the process of holding that the police could not search the curtilage of a home with a drug-sniffing dog without a warrant or an exception to the warrant requirement, this Court noted that it was not typically hard to figure out the scope of a person’s implied license to approach a home. “Complying with the terms of that traditional invitation does not require fine-grained legal knowledge; it is generally managed without incident by the Nation’s Girl Scouts and trick-or-treaters.” Id. at 8. The questions presented are:

1. Whether the Fourth Amendment applies to knock and talk encounters.

2. If yes, whether the Michigan Supreme Court correctly held that a predawn visit constitutes a constitutional trespass in violation of the implied license to approach.