High court limits officers’ power to search vehicles

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court is putting limits on the ability of police to search vehicles when they do not have a search warrant.

The court sided 8-1 Tuesday with a Virginia man who complained that police walked onto his driveway and pulled back a tarp covering his motorcycle, which turned out to be stolen. They acted without a warrant, relying on a line of Supreme Court cases generally allowing police to search a vehicle without a warrant.

The justices said the automobile exception does not apply when searching vehicles parked adjacent to a home.

Virginia’s Supreme Court said the case involved what the Supreme Court has called the “automobile exception,” which generally allows police to search a vehicle without a warrant if they believe the vehicle contains contraband.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor said for the court Tuesday that the state court was wrong. Sotomayor said that constitutional protections for a person’s home and the area surrounding it, the curtilage, outweigh the police interest in conducting a vehicle search without a warrant.

Justice Samuel Alito dissented, saying the police acted reasonably.

In other cases Tuesday, the Supreme Court:

Allowed Arkansas to enforce restrictions on how so-called abortion pills can be administered while a legal challenge to the restrictions proceeds, which critics say effectively ends that option for women in the state.

Declined the appeal of Ohio inmate Kevin Keith, who is serving a life sentence but has long maintained his innocence in the 1994 slaying of three people.