Supreme Court agrees to hear case involving the privacy of hotel/motel guest lists.

The hotel guest list case involves a Los Angeles city ordinance that gives local police the authority to inspect hotel guest records at any time, without a search warrant and without the hotel's consent.  At issue in the case is both whether hotels have any commercial privacy interest in their guest records, and whether, if they do, police must first get a court's permission before examining those documents.

In taking the case to the Supreme Court, however, the city also raised a question that, depending on how the Supreme Court answers it, could end the case without a ruling at this point on the privacy of hotel guest lists.  That is the question of whether a "facial challenge" is ever allowed against a law that allegedly violates the Fourth Amendment.  Because the Fourth Amendment focuses on whether a search is "reasonable," the specific facts in a case may have a strong bearing on whether that test is satisfied.  In a facial challenge, however, the test is whether a law can be used in any case, no matter what the facts are.  If facial challenges to such claims are barred, then the only legal avenue open is a challenge to the law as carried out in a given factual scenario.

The city told the Court that there are at least seventy laws at the state and local level across the country that permit police to inspect hotel guest records without prior court approval.  "These laws," the city petition said, "expressly help police investigate crimes such as prostitution and gambling, capture dangerous fugitives and even authorize federal law enforcement to examine these registers -- an authorization which can be vital in the immediate aftermath of a domestic terrorist attack."