Sobriety checkpoints, safety checkpoints, drug checkpoints, immigration checkpoints, and any other checkpoint on our roadways is an attack on liberty and freedom. The people need to stand up in statehouses and demand that such checkpoints be made illegal. 

The sole purpose of these checkpoints is to give the police an opportunity to develop an articulable reasonable suspicion that a driver and / or passenger[s] has committed or is committing a crime.  Some lawyer or judge added the word reasonable to make the unreasonable appear reasonable —but it is far from it!  If this is the land of the free and the home of the brave, how is it that police are allowed to set up roadblock dragnets? 

 The 4th Amendment is clear in its guarantee…

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Is it reasonable for law enforcement to knock on doors in a neighborhood asking for identification for no other purpose than to develop a reasonable suspicion that a crime is being committed?  What if the police blocked off the streets in the neighborhood at midnight and began knocking on doors?  Would this be alarming to you?  What if they asked you where you were earlier in the day or where you plan to go tomorrow?  What if the police say they think they smell marijuana in your house?  If it is not uncomfortable for you to think about this scenario, you are part of the problem.  You are part of the crowd that is blindly willing to trade a false sense of security for liberty. 

These checkpoints, which law enforcement adore because it gives them expanded power not afforded in peoples’ homes yet, were made possible by a Supreme Court decision in 1990.  In Michigan Dept. of State Police v. Sitz, 496 U.S. 444 (1990), the United States Supreme Court determined that these checkpoints met the Fourth Amendment standard of “reasonable search and seizure.”  However, the majority opinion was based on erroneous data as well as the height of notoriety for Mothers against Drug Driving (MADD).  Chief Justice Rehnquist wrote, “Drunk drivers cause an annual death toll of over 25,000 and in the same time span cause nearly one million personal injuries and more than five billion dollars in property damage.”  This has never been true.  Not even close.

What is important to understand is how the over 25,000 figure was computed and by whom.  This figure was provided by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).  In the 1980’s and 1990’s NHTSA had a computation methodology that was suspect at best.  Some of the 25,000 were just guesses based on probability.  For example, if a 25 year old white male died as the result of crashing his pick-up truck into a tree at 3:00 a.m. on a Saturday morning, and no toxicology report was available to NHTSA, it would be assumed the driver was intoxicated.  Far more troubling is this example:  if there was a head on collision in which two cars, with 4 persons in each, resulted in 8 fatalities, and it was determined that a passenger in the back seat of one of the vehicles was intoxicated, NHTSA would consider all 8 deaths as alcohol-related.   So what the public was fed was highly inflated numbers that influenced DUI laws across the nation and contributed greatly to the United States Supreme Court taking away your right to travel freely without police interference if obeying local traffic laws. 

The good news is that ten states have concluded that checkpoints violate their state constitutions.  Idaho, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Oregon, Rhode Island, Texas, Washington, Wisconsin, and Wyoming all recognize how offensive checkpoints are to liberty and freedom. 

It is time for the remaining 40 states to recognize how outrageous these checkpoints are and weigh them against the heightened protections guaranteed by their states’ constitution.  Libertarians across the nation should make this a key plank to the parties’ platform, while working with constitutional Republicans to get the hard work done.