The Supreme Court's June 10, 1996, ruling giving police broad power to use even minor traffic violations as justification for pulling over motorists and searching their cars for drugs.

Under the unanimous ruling, once a car is stopped because of a traffic violation, police may ask the driver questions and visually search the passenger compartment. If officers suspect a weapon is in the car, they can physically search the entire car.

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

Syllabus

WHREN ET AL.

v.

UNITED STATES

CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

No. 95-5841.  Argued April 17, 1996-Decided June 10, 1996

Plainclothes policemen patrolling a "high drug area" in an unmarked
vehicle observed a truck driven by petitioner Brown waiting at a stop
sign at an intersection for an unusually long time; the truck then turned
suddenly, without signalling, and sped off at an "unreasonable"
speed. The officers stopped the vehicle, assertedly to warn the driver
about traffic violations, and upon approaching the truck observed
plastic bags of crack cocaine in petitioner Whren's hands. Petitioners
were arrested. Prior to trial on federal drug charges, they moved for
suppression of the evidence, arguing that the stop had not been
justified by either a reasonable suspicion or probable cause to believe
petitioners were engaged in illegal drug-dealing activity, and that the
officers' traffic-violation ground for approaching the truck was
pretextual. The motion to suppress was denied, petitioners were
convicted, and the Court of Appeals affirmed.

Held:  The temporary detention of a motorist upon probable cause to
believe that he has violated the traffic laws does not violate the Fourth
Amendment's prohibition against unreasonable seizures, even if a
reasonable officer would not have stopped the motorist absent some
additional law enforcement objective. Pp. 3-13.

(a) Detention of a motorist is reasonable where probable cause exists
to believe that a traffic violation has occurred. See, e.g., Delaware v.
Prouse, 440 U. S. 648, 659. Petitioners claim that, because the
police may be tempted to use commonly occurring traffic violations as
means of investigating violations of other laws, the Fourth
Amendment test for traffic stops should be whether a reasonable
officer would have stopped the car for the purpose of enforcing the
traffic violation at issue. However, this Court's cases foreclose the
argument that ulterior motives can invalidate police conduct justified
on the basis of probable cause. See, e.g., United States v. Robinson,
414 U. S. 218, 221, n. 1, 236. Subjective intentions play no role in
ordinary, probable-cause Fourth Amendment analysis. Pp. 3-7.

(b) Although framed as an empirical question--whether the officer's
conduct deviated materially from standard police practices--petitioners'
proposed test is plainly designed to combat the perceived danger of
pretextual stops. It is thus inconsistent with this Court's cases, which
make clear that the Fourth Amendment's concern with
"reasonableness" allows certain actions to be taken in certain
circumstances, whatever the subjective intent. See, e.g., Robinson,
supra, at 236. Nor can the Fourth Amendment's protections be
thought to vary from place to place and from time to time, which
would be the consequence of assessing the reasonableness of police
conduct in light of local law enforcement practices. Pp. 7-10.

(c) Also rejected is petitioners' argument that the balancing of interests
inherent in Fourth Amendment inquiries does not support enforcement
of minor traffic laws by plainclothes police in unmarked vehicles,
since that practice only minimally advances the government's interest
in traffic safety while subjecting motorists to inconvenience,
confusion, and anxiety. Where probable cause exists, this Court has
found it necessary to engage in balancing only in cases involving
searches or seizures conducted in a manner unusually harmful to the
individual. See, e.g., Tennessee v. Garner, 471 U. S. 1. The making
of a traffic stop out-of-uniform does not remotely qualify as such an
extreme practice. Pp. 10-13. 53 F. 3d 371, affirmed.

SCALIA, J., delivered the opinion for a unanimous Court.


_______________________________________________________


NOTICE: This opinion is subject to formal revision before publication
in the preliminary print of the United States Reports. Readers are
requested to notify the Reporter of Decisions, Supreme Court of the
United States, Wash-ington, D.C. 20543, of any typographical or
other formal errors, in order that corrections may be made before the
preliminary print goes to press.

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

No. 95-5841

MICHAEL A. WHREN AND JAMES L. BROWN, PETITIONERS

v.

UNITED STATES

ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT
OF APPEALS FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

[June 10, 1996]

JUSTICE SCALIA delivered the opinion of the Court.

In this case we decide whether the temporary detention of a motorist
who the police have probable cause to believe has committed a civil
traffic violation is inconsistent with the Fourth Amendment's
prohibition against unreasonable seizures unless a reasonable officer
would have been motivated to stop the car by a desire to enforce the
traffic laws.

On the evening of June 10, 1993, plainclothes vice-squad officers of
the District of Columbia Metropolitan Police Department were
patrolling a "high drug area" of the city in an unmarked car. Their
suspicions were aroused when they passed a dark Pathfinder truck
with temporary license plates and youthful occupants waiting at a stop
sign, the driver looking down into the lap of the passenger at his right.
The truck remained stopped at the intersection for what seemed an
unusually long time--more than 20 seconds. When the police car
executed a U-turn in order to head back toward the truck, the
Pathfinder turned suddenly to its right, without signalling, and sped
off at an "unreasonable" speed. The policemen followed, and in a
short while overtook the Pathfinder when it stopped behind other
traffic at a red light. They pulled up alongside, and Officer Ephraim
Soto stepped out and approached the driver's door, identifying
himself as a police officer and directing the driver, petitioner Brown,
to put the vehicle in park. When Soto drew up to the driver's
window, he immediately observed two large plastic bags of what
appeared to be crack cocaine in petitioner Whren's hands. Petitioners
were arrested, and quantities of several types of illegal drugs were
retrieved from the vehicle.

Petitioners were charged in a four-count indictment with violating
various federal drug laws, including 21 U. S. C. Sections 844(a) and
860(a). At a pretrial suppression hearing, they challenged the legality
of the stop and the resulting seizure of the drugs. They argued that the
stop had not been justified by probable cause to believe, or even
reasonable suspicion, that petitioners were engaged in illegal drug-
dealing activity; and that Officer Soto's asserted ground for
approaching the vehicle--to give the driver a warning concerning
traffic violations-- was pretextual. The District Court denied the
suppression motion, concluding that "the facts of the stop were not
controverted," and "[t]here was nothing to really demonstrate that the
actions of the officers were contrary to a normal traffic stop."  App. 5.

Petitioners were convicted of the counts at issue here. The Court of
Appeals affirmed the convictions, holding with respect to the
suppression issue that, "regardless of whether a police officer
subjectively believes that the occupants of an automobile may be
engaging in some other illegal behavior, a traffic stop is permissible as
long as a reasonable officer in the same circumstances could have
stopped the car for the suspected traffic violation."  53 F. 3d 371,
374-375 (CADC 1995). We granted certiorari. 516 U. S. ___
(1996).

The Fourth Amendment guarantees "[t]he right of the people to be
secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against
unreasonable searches and seizures." Temporary detention of
individuals during the stop of an automobile by the police, even if
only for a brief period and for a limited purpose, constitutes a
"seizure" of "persons" within the meaning of this provision. See
Delaware v. Prouse, 440 U. S. 648, 653 (1979); United States v.
Martinez-Fuerte, 428 U. S. 543, 556 (1976); United States v.
Brignoni-Ponce, 422 U. S. 873, 878 (1975). An automobile stop is
thus subject to the constitutional imperative that it not be
"unreasonable" under the circumstances. As a general matter, the
decision to stop an automobile is reasonable where the police have
probable cause to believe that a traffic violation has occurred. See
Prouse, supra, at 659; Pennsylvania v. Mimms, 434 U. S. 106, 109
(1977) (per curiam).

Petitioners accept that Officer Soto had probable cause to believe that
various provisions of the District of Columbia traffic code had been
violated. See 18 D. C. Mun. Regs. Sections 2213.4 (1995) ("An
operator shall . . . give full time and attention to the operation of the
vehicle"); 2204.3 ("No person shall turn any vehicle . . . without
giving an appropriate signal"); 2200.3 ("No person shall drive a
vehicle . . . at a speed greater than is reasonable and prudent under the
conditions"). They argue, however, that "in the unique context of
civil traffic regulations" probable cause is not enough. Since, they
contend, the use of automobiles is so heavily and minutely regulated
that total compliance with traffic and safety rules is nearly impossible,
a police officer will almost invariably be able to catch any given
motorist in a technical violation. This creates the temptation to use
traffic stops as a means of investigating other law violations, as to
which no probable cause or even articulable suspicion exists.
Petitioners, who are both black, further contend that police officers
might decide which motorists to stop based on decidedly
impermissible factors, such as the race of the car's occupants. To
avoid this danger, they say, the Fourth Amendment test for traffic
stops should be, not the normal one (applied by the Court of Appeals)
of whether probable cause existed to justify the stop; but rather,
whether a police officer, acting reasonably, would have made the stop
for the reason given.

Petitioners contend that the standard they propose is consistent with
our past cases' disapproval of police attempts to use valid bases of
action against citizens as pretexts for pursuing other investigatory
agendas. We are reminded that in Florida v. Wells, 495 U. S. 1, 4
(1990), we stated that "an inventory search[1 ] must not be used as a
ruse for a general rummaging in order to discover incriminating
evidence"; that in Colorado v. Bertine, 479 U. S. 367, 372 (1987), in
approving an inventory search, we apparently thought it significant
that there had been "no showing that the police, who were following
standard procedures, acted in bad faith or for the sole purpose of
investigation"; and that in New York v. Burger, 482 U. S. 691, 716-
717, n. 27 (1987), we observed, in upholding the constitutionality of
a warrantless administrative inspection,2  that the search did not
appear to be "a `pretext' for obtaining evidence of . . . violation of...
penal laws."  But only an undiscerning reader would regard these
cases as endorsing the principle that ulterior motives can invalidate
police conduct that is justifiable on the basis of probable cause to
believe that a violation of law has occurred. In each case we were
addressing the validity of a search conducted in the absence of
probable cause. Our quoted statements simply explain that the
exemption from the need for probable cause (and warrant), which is
accorded to searches made for the purpose of inventory or
administrative regulation, is not accorded to searches that are not made
for those purposes. See Bertine, supra, at 371-372; Burger, supra, at
702-703.

Petitioners also rely upon Colorado v. Bannister, 449 U. S. 1 (1980)
(per curiam), a case which, like this one, involved a traffic stop as the
prelude to a plain-view sighting and arrest on charges wholly
unrelated to the basis for the stop. Petitioners point to our statement
that "there was no evidence whatsoever that the officer's presence to
issue a traffic citation was a pretext to confirm any other previous
suspicion about the occupants" of the car. Id., at 4, n. 4. That dictum
at most demonstrates that the Court in Bannister found no need to
inquire into the question now under discussion; not that it was certain
of the answer. And it may demonstrate even less than that: if by
"pretext" the Court meant that the officer really had not seen the car
speeding, the statement would mean only that there was no reason to
doubt probable cause for the traffic stop.

It would, moreover, be anomalous, to say the least, to treat a
statement in a footnote in the per curiam Bannister opinion as
indicating a reversal of our prior law. Petitioners' difficulty is not
simply a lack of affirmative support for their position. Not only have
we never held, outside the context of inventory search or
administrative inspection (discussed above), that an officer's motive
invalidates objectively justifiable behavior under the Fourth
Amendment; but we have repeatedly held and asserted the contrary.
In United States v. Villamonte-Marquez, 462 U. S. 579, 584, n. 3
(1983), we held that an otherwise valid warrantless boarding of a
vessel by customs officials was not rendered invalid "because the
customs officers were accompanied by a Louisiana state policeman,
and were following an informant's tip that a vessel in the ship channel
was thought to be carrying marihuana."  We flatly dismissed the idea
that an ulterior motive might serve to strip the agents of their legal
justification. In United States v. Robinson, 414 U. S. 218 (1973),
we held that a traffic-violation arrest (of the sort here) would not be
rendered invalid by the fact that it was "a mere pretext for a narcotics
search," id., at 221, n. 1; and that a lawful postarrest search of the
person would not be rendered invalid by the fact that it was not
motivated by the officer-safety concern that justifies such searches,
see id., at 236. See also Gustafson v. Florida, 414 U. S. 260, 266
(1973). And in Scott v. United States, 436 U. S. 128, 138 (1978), in
rejecting the contention that wiretap evidence was subject to exclusion
because the agents conducting the tap had failed to make any effort to
comply with the statutory requirement that unauthorized acquisitions
be minimized, we said that "[s]ubjective intent alone . . . does not
make otherwise lawful conduct illegal or unconstitutional."  We
described Robinson as having established that "the fact that the officer
does not have the state of mind which is hypothecated by the reasons
which provide the legal justification for the officer's action does not
invalidate the action taken as long as the circumstances, viewed
objectively, justify that action." 436 U. S., at 138.

We think these cases foreclose any argument that the constitutional
reasonableness of traffic stops depends on the actual motivations of
the individual officers involved. We of course agree with petitioners
that the Constitution prohibits selective enforcement of the law based
on considerations such as race. But the constitutional basis for
objecting to intentionally discriminatory application of laws is the
Equal Protection Clause, not the Fourth Amendment. Subjective
intentions play no role in ordinary, probable-cause Fourth Amendment
analysis.

Recognizing that we have been unwilling to entertain Fourth
Amendment challenges based on the actual motivations of individual
officers, petitioners disavow any intention to make the individual
officer's subjective good faith the touchstone of "reasonableness."
They insist that the standard they have put forward--whether the
officer's conduct deviated materially from usual police practices, so
that a reasonable officer in the same circumstances would not have
made the stop for the reasons given--is an "objective" one.

But although framed in empirical terms, this approach is plainly and
indisputably driven by subjective considerations. Its whole purpose is
to prevent the police from doing under the guise of enforcing the
traffic code what they would like to do for different reasons.
Petitioners' proposed standard may not use the word "pretext," but it
is designed to combat nothing other than the perceived "danger" of the
pretextual stop, albeit only indirectly and over the run of cases.
Instead of asking whether the individual officer had the proper state of
mind, the petitioners would have us ask, in effect, whether (based on
general police practices) it is plausible to believe that the officer had
the proper state of mind.

Why one would frame a test designed to combat pretext in such
fashion that the court cannot take into account actual and admitted
pretext is a curiosity that can only be explained by the fact that our
cases have foreclosed the more sensible option. If those cases were
based only upon the evidentiary difficulty of establishing subjective
intent, petitioners' attempt to root out subjective vices through
objective means might make sense. But they were not based only
upon that, or indeed even principally upon that. Their principal basis-
-which applies equally to attempts to reach subjective intent through
ostensibly objective means--is simply that the Fourth Amendment's
concern with "reasonableness" allows certain actions to be taken in
certain circumstances, whatever the subjective intent. See, e.g.,
Robinson, supra, at 236 ("Since it is the fact of custodial arrest which
gives rise to the authority to search, it is of no moment that [the
officer] did not indicate any subjective fear of the [arrestee] or that he
did not himself suspect that [the arrestee] was armed"); Gustafson,
supra, at 266 (same). But even if our concern had been only an
evidentiary one, petitioners' proposal would by no means assuage it.
Indeed, it seems to us somewhat easier to figure out the intent of an
individual officer than to plumb the collective consciousness of law
enforcement in order to determine whether a "reasonable officer"
would have been moved to act upon the traffic violation. While police
manuals and standard procedures may sometimes provide objective
assistance, ordinarily one would be reduced to speculating about the
hypothetical reaction of a hypothetical constable--an exercise that
might be called virtual subjectivity.

Moreover, police enforcement practices, even if they could be
practicably assessed by a judge, vary from place to place and from
time to time. We cannot accept that the search and seizure protections
of the Fourth Amendment are so variable, cf. Gustafson, supra, at
265; United States v. Caceres, 440 U. S. 741, 755-756 (1979), and
can be made to turn upon such trivialities. The difficulty is illustrated
by petitioners' arguments in this case. Their claim that a reasonable
officer would not have made this stop is based largely on District of
Columbia police regulations which permit plainclothes officers in
unmarked vehicles to enforce traffic laws "only in the case of a
violation that is so grave as to pose an immediate threat to the safety of
others."  Metropolitan Police Department--Washington, D. C.,
General Order 303.1, pt. 1, Objectives and Policies (A)(2)(4) (Apr.
30, 1992), reprinted as Addendum to Brief for Petitioners. This basis
of invalidation would not apply in jurisdictions that had a different
practice. And it would not have applied even in the District of
Columbia, if Officer Soto had been wearing a uniform or patrolling in
a marked police cruiser.

Petitioners argue that our cases support insistence upon police
adherence to standard practices as an objective means of rooting out
pretext. They cite no holding to that effect, and dicta in only two
cases. In Abel v. United States, 362 U. S. 217 (1960), the petitioner
had been arrested by the Immigration and Naturalization Service
(INS), on the basis of an administrative warrant that, he claimed, had
been issued on pretextual grounds in order to enable the Federal
Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to search his room after his arrest. We
regarded this as an allegation of "serious misconduct," but rejected
Abel's claims on the ground that "[a] finding of bad faith is... not
open to us on th[e] record" in light of the findings below, including
the finding that "`the proceedings taken by the [INS] differed in no
respect from what would have been done in the case of an individual
concerning whom [there was no pending FBI investigation],'" id., at
226-227. But it is a long leap from the proposition that following
regular procedures is some evidence of lack of pretext to the
proposition that failure to follow regular procedures proves (or is an
operational substitute for) pretext. Abel, moreover, did not involve
the assertion that pretext could invalidate a search or seizure for which
there was probable cause--and even what it said about pretext in other
contexts is plainly inconsistent with the views we later stated in
Robinson, Gustafson, Scott, and Villamonte-Marquez. In the other
case claimed to contain supportive dicta, United States v. Robinson,
414 U. S. 218 (1973), in approving a search incident to an arrest for
driving without a license, we noted that the arrest was "not a departure
from established police department practice."  Id., at 221, n. 1. That
was followed, however, by the statement that "[w]e leave for another
day questions which would arise on facts different from these."  Ibid.
This is not even a dictum that purports to provide an answer, but
merely one that leaves the question open.

In what would appear to be an elaboration on the "reasonable officer"
test, petitioners argue that the balancing inherent in any Fourth
Amendment inquiry requires us to weigh the governmental and
individual interests implicated in a traffic stop such as we have here.
That balancing, petitioners claim, does not support investigation of
minor traffic infractions by plainclothes police in unmarked vehicles;
such investigation only minimally advances the government's interest
in traffic safety, and may indeed retard it by producing motorist
confusion and alarm--a view said to be supported by the Metropolitan
Police Department's own regulations generally prohibiting this
practice. And as for the Fourth Amendment interests of the
individuals concerned, petitioners point out that our cases
acknowledge that even ordinary traffic stops entail "a possibly
unsettling show of authority"; that they at best "interfere with freedom
of movement, are inconvenient, and consume time" and at worst "may
create substantial anxiety," Prouse, 440 U. S., at 657. That anxiety is
likely to be even more pronounced when the stop is conducted by
plainclothes officers in unmarked cars.

It is of course true that in principle every Fourth Amendment case,
since it turns upon a "reasonableness" determination, involves a
balancing of all relevant factors. With rare exceptions not applicable
here, however, the result of that balancing is not in doubt where the
search or seizure is based upon probable cause. That is why
petitioners must rely upon cases like Prouse to provide examples of
actual "balancing" analysis. There, the police action in question was a
random traffic stop for the purpose of checking a motorist's license
and vehicle registration, a practice that--like the practices at issue in the
inventory search and administrative inspection cases upon which
petitioners rely in making their "pretext" claim--involves police
intrusion without the probable cause that is its traditional justification.
Our opinion in Prouse expressly distinguished the case from a stop
based on precisely what is at issue here: "probable cause to believe
that a driver is violating any one of the multitude of applicable traffic
and equipment regulations."  440 U. S., at 661. It noted approvingly
that "[t]he foremost method of enforcing traffic and vehicle safety
regulations... is acting upon observed violations," id., at 659, which
afford the "`quantum of individualized suspicion'" necessary to ensure
that police discretion is sufficiently constrained, id., at 654-655
(quoting United States v. Martinez-Fuerte, 428 U. S., at 560). What
is true of Prouse is also true of other cases that engaged in detailed
"balancing" to decide the constitutionality of automobile stops, such as
Martinez-Fuerte, supra, which upheld checkpoint stops, see 428 U.
S., at 556-562, and Brignoni-Ponce, supra, which disallowed so-
called "roving patrol" stops, see 422 U. S., at 882-884: the detailed
"balancing" analysis was necessary because they involved seizures
without probable cause.

Where probable cause has existed, the only cases in which we have
found it necessary actually to perform the "balancing" analysis
involved searches or seizures conducted in an extraordinary manner,
unusually harmful to an individual's privacy or even physical
interests--such as, for example, seizure by means of deadly force, see
Tennessee v. Garner, 471 U. S. 1 (1985), unannounced entry into a
home, see Wilson v. Arkansas, 514 U. S. ___ (1995), entry into a
home without a warrant, see Welsh v. Wisconsin, 466 U. S. 740
(1984), or physical penetration of the body, see Winston v. Lee, 470
U. S. 753 (1985). The making of a traffic stop out-of-uniform does
not remotely qualify as such an extreme practice, and so is governed
by the usual rule that probable cause to believe the law has been
broken "outbalances" private interest in avoiding police contact.

Petitioners urge as an extraordinary factor in this case that the
"multitude of applicable traffic and equipment regulations" is so large
and so difficult to obey perfectly that virtually everyone is guilty of
violation, permitting the police to single out almost whomever they
wish for a stop. But we are aware of no principle that would allow us
to decide at what point a code of law becomes so expansive and so
commonly violated that infraction itself can no longer be the ordinary
measure of the lawfulness of enforcement. And even if we could
identify such exorbitant codes, we do not know by what standard (or
what right) we would decide, as petitioners would have us do, which
particular provisions are sufficiently important to merit enforcement.

For the run-of-the-mine case, which this surely is, we think there is
no realistic alternative to the traditional common-law rule that probable
cause justifies a search and seizure.

Here the District Court found that the officers had probable cause to
believe that petitioners had violated the traffic code. That rendered the
stop reasonable under the Fourth Amendment, the evidence thereby
discovered admissible, and the upholding of the convictions by the
Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit correct.

Judgment affirmed.

ENDNOTES

1 An inventory search is the search of property lawfully seized and
detained, in order to ensure that it is harmless, to secure valuable items
(such as might be kept in a towed car), and to protect against false
claims of loss or damage. See South Dakota v. Opperman, 428 U. S.
364, 369 (1976).

2 An administrative inspection is the inspection of business premises
conducted by authorities responsible for enforcing a pervasive
regulatory scheme--for example, unannounced inspection of a mine
for compliance with health and safety standards. See Donovan v.
Dewey, 452 U. S. 594, 599-605 (1981).