UPDATES & ANALYSIS

U.S. Supreme Court denies review in Iowa drunk driving case

by Ryan Koopmans | April 28, 2014

By Ryan Koopmans

The Iowa Supreme Court won’t have to reconsider its ruling in State v. Kooima after all.

Kooima held by a 4-3 vote that police may not stop a vehicle based solely on an anonymous tip that the driver is drunk. That conclusion seemed very much in doubt after the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling last week in Navarette v. California, which held that officers lawfully stopped a vehicle based on an anonymous tipster’s claim that the car had run her off the road. As we noted then, the Iowa Supreme Court decided Kooima under the Federal Constitution, so Navarette’s contrary ruling on similar facts suggested a remand was on the horizon.

Not so. This morning, the U.S. Supreme Court denied the State’s request to review Kooima. The Court didn’t say why (which is the norm), but it probably came down to a distinction between the tips in each case. In Kooima, the tipster didn’t report any reckless or dangerous driving; he claimed that he was watching a group of guys leaving a bar and “[e]verybody in the damn vehicle” is drunk. In Navarette, on the other hand, the tipster reported she was run off the road by the suspect’s dangerous driving.

That’s about the only meaningful distinction between the two cases (see our comparison here), but details matter under the Fourth Amendment. And the cops will have to keep those details in mind the next time they get an anonymous tip about a possible drunk driver.

Tags: Iowa Supreme Court, U.S Supreme Court