## Facts

- Los Angeles Municipal Code § 41.49 required hotels and motels to collect detailed guest information (including identity, vehicle data, stay dates, room number, rate, and payment method).
- Operators had to keep the guest register on-site for 90 days in the reception/check-in area.
- The ordinance required operators to make the register available to Los Angeles police officers for on-demand inspection, at a time and in a manner intended to minimize business interference.
- Noncompliance was a misdemeanor punishable by up to six months’ imprisonment and a $1,000 fine.
- Hotel operators and a lodging association brought a § 1983 action alleging the on-demand, warrantless inspection provision violated the Fourth Amendment.
- The district court and an initial Ninth Circuit panel rejected the claim; the en banc Ninth Circuit reversed, holding the ordinance unconstitutional for lack of an opportunity for precompliance judicial review.

## Issues

1. Whether facial challenges under the Fourth Amendment to statutes authorizing warrantless searches are categorically barred or disfavored.
2. Whether § 41.49’s warrantless, officer-initiated, on-demand inspection of hotel guest records is unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment.
3. Whether hotels qualify as a “closely regulated” industry permitting warrantless administrative inspections without ordinary Fourth Amendment safeguards.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court affirmed the en banc Ninth Circuit in a 5–4 decision (Justice Sotomayor).
- The Court held that Fourth Amendment facial challenges to search-authorizing statutes are neither categorically barred nor especially disfavored.
- The Court held § 41.49 facially unconstitutional because it compelled immediate production of records on threat of criminal penalty without any mechanism for precompliance review by a neutral decisionmaker.
- The Court rejected treating hotels as a closely regulated industry for purposes of exempting the ordinance from ordinary Fourth Amendment requirements.
- The Court emphasized the ruling did not invalidate the recordkeeping requirement itself and did not bar police access obtained through consent, a warrant or subpoena with review, or recognized warrant exceptions.

## Legal Principles

- Facial Fourth Amendment challenges to statutes authorizing searches are available; review focuses on the searches the law authorizes, not searches justified by independent doctrines (e.g., consent or exigency).
- Administrative inspection regimes generally must provide the target an opportunity for precompliance review before a neutral decisionmaker.
- A scheme that authorizes immediate, warrantless inspection and threatens criminal sanctions for refusal, without a meaningful avenue to contest the demand before punishment, is unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment.
- The “closely regulated industry” exception is limited; courts should not extend it absent a demonstrated, inherent, and significant risk to public welfare comparable to historically recognized industries.

## Conclusion

The Court held that Los Angeles’s ordinance authorizing warrantless, on-demand inspections of hotel guest registries was facially invalid because it lacked precompliance review before a neutral decisionmaker, and it confirmed that facial challenges to Fourth Amendment search regimes are permissible.


City of Los Angeles v. Patel, 576 U.S. 409 (2015)