Colonnade Catering Corporation v. United States (1969)
- Docket
- 108
- Decided
- 1969-01-01
- Category
- General
Summary
Question: Are warrantless administrative searches and seizures of liquor allowed under statute and, if so, reasonable under the Fourth Amendment? Conclusion: No. Justice William O. Douglas delivered the opinion for the 5-3 majority. The Court argued that business owners have a constitutional right to go about their business without unreasonable official entries onto their property. However, emphasizing a long history of liquor industry regulation, the Court stated that Congress has broad powers to fashion standards for reasonable searches of licensee’s businesses. The Court did not find the statute unconstitutional, but interpreted the statute’s imposition of a $500 fine on licensed liquor dealers who refuse to permit federal agents to inspect their liquor to mean that the fine was the only remedy available to the government upon a licensee’s refusal to grant entry. Chief Justice Warren E. Burger wrote a dissenting opinion in which he argued that the term “so far as it may be necessary” authorized the search and that the statutory penalty was enacted merely to encourage compliance by licensed liquor dealers. Because Congress could not have intended to allow licensed liquor to avoid confiscation of their liquor for a relatively small $500 fine, the fine does not mean that liquor dealers can opt out of the statutory inspection. Justice Hugo L. Black and Justice Potter Stewart joined in the dissent. In his separate dissent, Justice Hugo L. Black wrote that the statutes do not expressly declare forcible search and seizure illegal and thus implicitly authorized the seizure in this case. Chief Justice Warren E. Burger and Justice Potter Stewart joined in the separate dissent.