Camara v. Municipal Court City and County San Francisco

In Frank v. Maryland, 359 U.S. 360, this Court upheld, by a five-to-four vote, a state court conviction of a homeowner who refused to permit a municipal health inspector to enter and inspect his premises without a search warrant. In Eaton v. Price, 364 U.S. 263, a similar conviction was affirmed by an equally divided Court. Since those closely divided decisions, more intensive efforts at all levels of government to contain and eliminate urban blight have led to increasing use of such inspection techniques, while numerous decisions of this Court have more fully defined the Fourth Amendments effect on state and municipal action. E. g., Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643; Ker v. California, 374 U.S. 23. In view of the growing nationwide importance of the problem, we noted probable jurisdiction in this case and in See v. City of Seattle, post, p. 541, to re-examine whether administrative inspection programs, as presently authorized and conducted, violate Fourth Amendment rights as those rights are enforced against the States through the Fourteenth Amendment. 385 U.S. 808.