Whether dwellers in multi-family homes have a legitimate expectation of privacy in the curtilage of their home that would be regarded as curtilage under Virginia v. Collins

QUESTION PRESENTED The question presented in this petition is as follows: Whether, In The Context Of An Automobile Search, Dwellers In Multi-Family Homes Have A_ Legitimate Expectation Of Privacy In The Areas Surrounding Their Home That Would Be Regarded As Curtilage Under Virginia v. Collins, 584 U.S. __, 188 S.Ct. 1663 (2018) If Their Home Were A Single-Family Dwelling? In Collins v. Virginia, 584 U.S. __, 138 S.Ct. 1663 (2018) this Court held that a dweller in a single-family home has a legitimate expectation of privacy in the curtilage of their home that trumps the automobile exception to the warrant requirement. “The automobile exception does not afford the necessary lawful right of access to search a vehicle parked within a home or its curtilage because it does not justify an intrusion on a person’s separate and substantial Fourth Amendment interest in his home and curtilage,” the Court ruled. Collins at 1672. The holding of the case was unambiguous: “[T]he automobile exception does not permit an officer without a warrant to enter a home or its curtilage in order to search a vehicle therein.” Collins at 1675. Left unaddressed by the Court in Collins is whether dwellers in multi-family homes have a similar expectation of privacy in the curtilage of their homes. Mr. Jones seeks certiorari to present this issue in a case almost tailor-made to present consideration of this question. ll At the time Collins was decided, United States v. Jones, 893 F.3d. 66 (F.3d., 2nd Cir.), was sub judice before a panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. The Circuit deliberately withheld its decision in Jones until this Court decided Collins, no doubt anticipating that Collins would shed necessary light on how Jones ought to be decided. On June 19, 2018, the Second Circuit rejected Mr. Jones’s claim that he had a legitimate expectation of privacy in the curtilage of his multi-family apartment building, and upheld a trial court denial of Mr. Jones’s motion to suppress the search of his automobile parked in the common parking area of his home. As of this writing, the Second Circuit is the only federal appellate court to apply Collins to a case involving the curtilage of a multi-family dwelling. The Second Circuit ruling was simple, and fatal to any claim that a dweller in a multifamily home has a legitimate expectation of privacy in the curtilage of their home. Indeed, the ruling goes so far as to raise a substantial federal question about whether the concept of curtilage has any application at all to multifamily homes. The Second Circuit concluded that Mr. Jones’s claim that the warrantless search of his car was unlawful “fails because the driveway in which Mr. Jones’s vehicle was parked was the shared driveway of tenants in two multi-family buildings and was not within the curtilage of Jones’s private home.” United States v. Jones, 893 F.3d 66, 72 (2d Cir. 2018) “We hold that Jones had no legitimate expectation of privacy in the rear parking lot” of his home, the Circuit concluded. Jones at 72. iii This ruling assumes without deciding an issue requiring this Court’s attention: whether the common spaces we share of necessity with neighbors in common dwellings must also, as a matter of law, be shared with agents of the state? For the millions of Americans who reside, either by economic necessity or lifestyle choice, in multi-family structures, treating the state as a tenant in common of the _ private’ spaces surrounding their home should come as an offensive surprise. The Fourth Amendment was intended to serve as a real and potent limitation on government power, not an invitation to camp outside the door of our private dwellings.