FAA Hangar searches

[Tom-D]

I've been following this thread

http://eaaforums.org/showthread.php?4579-FAA-Compliance-Hangar-Inspection-Juneau-Alaska

I have a questions about the FAA's authority to search your hangar simply because your airport used FAA money to update their facilities. BVS has spent about 20 million bucks of FAA money in the past couple years. MY rental agreement requires the airport staff must give me 3 days notice before they enter to do any thing. except of course any emergencies.

Can the FAA actually enter your hangar with out notice or reason?

 

[Jim Logajan]

It doesn't. They need probable cause and must have a search warrant to do a legal search.

No kidding. Not sure what is up with everyone claiming otherwise. Consider the example case described in the link below. The feds didn't have a warrant so when they did luck out and found evidence of a crime, it was tossed.

Evidence at suppression hearing was insufficient to establish to reasonable certainty that airplane had crossed United States-Mexico border so as to support finding that warrantless search of airplane and hangar was justified as search at functional equivalent of border; there were number of airfields between border and location 58 miles north of border where airplane was first detected, and airplane's low altitude, lack of transponder, travel from unpopulated area through military zone, and lack of lights during landing process were insufficient to give rise to reasonable certainty that anything had been smuggled across border.
http://www.brownbradshaw.com/uploads/Mayer.pdf

 

[Jim Logajan]

You're confusing the FAA's conduct of an administrative inspection with a law enforcement agency conducting a criminal investigation.

There should be no confusion. Since the fourth and fifth amendment were written in response to King George's Writs of Assistance, which had many of the same characteristics as regulatory administrative inspections (i.e. perpetual and general in scope,) the historical evidence indicates that the fourth amendment was intended to cover them. So, for example, if denied access, the government inspector would need to come back with an administrative warrant to gain legal access.

It seems that some years the U.S. Supreme Court rules on relevant cases that reaffirm that administrative inspections are covered by the fourth amendment. Other years they accept cases where they clarify the handful of exceptions that have been carved out that allow warrantless administrative inspections. As far as I can tell, warrantless administrative inspections are few and exceptional.

 

[Jim Logajan]

They happen all the time, and are conducted by pretty much every Federal agency, starting with the familiar-to-us-pilots Part 91 Ramp Inspection.

Hangar inspections are not one of the exceptions. See Marshall v. Barlow's Inc. for the criteria the SCOTUS uses in determining the few exceptions. If you know of a case where a hangar user who denied entry to an inspector was arrested as if they had denied access to someone with a warrant, and that arrest was upheld, feel free to present it anytime.

 

[Jim Logajan]

that's not what ron said. he said administrative inspections are frequent, whether it is an faa ramp check or a coast guard courtesy marine examination.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 4

I'm unclear why frequency of ramp checks is relevant to anything I've posted. The thread is about hangar inspections and searches, not ramp checks. Not that it matters, since both are constrained by the fourth amendment. Unless you think otherwise?