United States v. Carloss

In his book, A Republic if You Can Keep It, Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch writes about United States v. Carloss:

“Today’s case comes at us along similar lines but from a different vector. A home’s curtilage—that area “immediately surrounding and associated with the home”—is protected by the Fourth Amendment much like the home itself. So not only do officers need a warrant, exigent circumstances, or consent to enter a home, they also generally need one of those things to reach the home’s front door in the first place. Typically, of course, officers contend that their intrusion into the curtilage for a knock and talk is justified by the homeowner’s implied consent. And usually there’s no question about it, for the Supreme Court has recognized that the “knocker on the front door” normally supplies an implied “invitation or license” for visitors of all kinds to enter the home’s curtilage and knock at the front door. By placing a knocker on the front door (or, I’m sure, a doorbell next to it), the homeowner is traditionally said to invite even “solicitors” and “hawkers” to “approach the home by the front path, knock promptly, wait briefly to be received, and then (absent invitation to linger longer) leave.” For this same reason and to the same extent, the Court has explained, law enforcement agents, no less than anyone else, may approach the front door and seek entry.” Gorsuch, Neil M. . A Republic, If You Can Keep It (p. 146). (Function). Kindle Edition.

Mr. Justice Gorsuch goes on to make what some may consider a humorous joke, what’s a person supposed to do, if a ‘No Trespassing’ sign doesn’t “revoke the implied license because they use the word “trespassing” and that term has become encrusted with a very particular meaning that just doesn’t speak to the implied license, what about signs that avoid the term and say instead Keep Out? Keep Off? Do Not Enter? Or how about this?”