Atwater v. City of Lago Vista

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Atwater v. City of Lago Vista

Supreme Court of the United States

Argued December 4, 2000
Decided April 24, 2001


Full case name:	Gail Atwater, et al., Petitionors v. City of Lago Vista, et al.

Citations:	532 U.S. 318; 121 S. Ct. 1536; 149 L. Ed. 2d 549; 2001 U.S. LEXIS 3366; 69 U.S.L.W. 4262; 2001 Cal. Daily Op. Service 3203; 2001 Daily Journal DAR 3953; 2001 Colo. J. C.A.R. 2069; 14 Fla. L. Weekly Fed. S 193

Prior history:	United States District Court for the Western District of Texas ruled for the City, 5th Circuit Court reversed

Subsequent history:	None

Holding

Police may make a warrantless arrest when someone commits a misdemeanor offense.

Court membership

Chief Justice: William Rehnquist
Associate Justices: John Paul Stevens, Sandra Day O'Connor, Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, David Souter, Clarence Thomas, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer

Case opinions

Majority by: Souter
Joined by: Rehnquist, Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas
Dissent by: O'Connor
Joined by: Stevens, Ginsburg, Breyer

Laws applied

U.S. Const. amend. IV

Altwater v. Lago Vista, 532 U.S. 318 (2001)^[1], was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that a woman's fourth amendment rights were not violated when she was arrested after driving without a seatbelt. They ruled that this did not constitute an "unreasonable... seizure".

The case came to the Supreme Court on appeal from the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, where the opinion had been written by Judge Emilio M. Garza.

[edit] Majority Opinion

"Accordingly, we confirm today what our prior cases have intimated: the standard of probable cause “applie[s] to all arrests, without the need to ‘balance’ the interests and circumstances involved in particular situations.” Dunaway v. New York, 442 U.S. 200, 208 (1979). If an officer has probable cause to believe that an individual has committed even a very minor criminal offense in his presence, he may, without violating the Fourth Amendment, arrest the offender."

The Court concluded that the officer had reasonable suspicion that she committed a crime (and she later admitted that she did) and that the arrest was not an "extraordinary manner, unusually harmful to [her] privacy or … physical interests."