State of Minnesota,

1
STATE OF MINNESOTA

IN SUPREME COURT

A21-0776

Court of Appeals Hudson, J.
Concurring, Chutich, Thissen, JJ.

State of Minnesota,

Respondent,

vs. Filed: May 3, 2023
Office of Appellate Courts
Amber Kay Barrow,

Appellant.

________________________

Keith Ellison, Attorney General, Saint Paul, Minnesota; and

Janelle P. Kendall, Stearns County Attorney, River D. Thelen, Assistant County Attorney,
Saint Cloud, Minnesota, for respondent.

Cathryn Middlebrook, Chief Appellate P ublic Defender, Abigail H. Rankin, Assistant
Public Defender, Saint Paul, Minnesota, for appellant.

Teresa Nelson, American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota ;
and

Elizabeth G. Bentley, Civil Rights Appellate Clinic, University of Minnesota Law School,
Minneapolis, Minnesota, for amici curiae American Civil Liberties Union Foundation and
American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota.

________________________
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S Y L L A B U S
The warrantless search of defendant’s purse was lawful under the automobile
exception to the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement because there was probable
cause to believe that the car contained a controlled substance, and the purse was a container
within that car.
Affirmed.
O P I N I O N
HUDSON, Justice.
Appellant Amber Kay Barrow was a passenger in a car searched by law enforcement
without a warrant. As she left the car, Barrow removed her purse from the car, but an
officer directed her to leave the purse on the car. The officer searched Barrow’s purse and
discovered a controlled substance in the purse.
On appeal from her conviction of fifth-degree possession of a controlled substance,
Barrow argues that the automobile exception did not authorize the warrantless search of
her purse. Barrow does not contest that there was probable cause to believe there were
controlled substances in the car and that controlled substances would fit in her purse .
Instead, she argues that the search was not authorized under the automobile exception
because the purse was an extension of her person, not a container within the car. Both the
district court and the court of appeals disagreed with Barrow’s argument.
We conclude that the search of Barrow’s purse was constitutional under the federal
automobile exception. We therefore affirm the decision of the court of appeals.
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FACTS
On March 18, 2018, Barrow was the only passenger in a car driving on Interstate 94
near Avon. After observing lane change violations, an officer with the Avon Police
Department pulled over the car. The officer approached the car and began speaking with
the driver and Barrow. The officer said that he smelled marijuana in the car and asked if
there was any in the car. Both denied possessing marijuana, and Barrow stated that they
had left a house where others were smoking marijuana.
The officer asked the driver and Barrow to leave the car. After Barrow stepped out
of the car, she immediately reached back inside and grabbed her purse. As Barrow began
walking to the rear of the car with her purse, the officer directed Barrow to leave her purse
on the car; Barrow placed her purse on the trunk of the car. The driver and Barrow then
stood in front of the squad car.
The officer placed Barrow’s purse back inside the vehicle and began to search the
purse. Inside the purse, the officer found four pills of Clonazepam, a controlled substance.
Barrow did not have a prescription for Clonazepam.
Barrow was charged with fifth -degree possession of a controlled substance ,
Minn. Stat. § 152.025, subds. 2(1), 4(b) (2022). Barrow moved to suppress the evidence
obtained from the purse search , arguing that the automobile exception to the Fourth
Amendment’s search warrant requirement did not apply because the purse was an
extension of Barrow’s person, not a container within the car. The State countered that the
purse was a container within the car at the time probable cause to search the car arose, and
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thus the automobile exception applied. The district court agreed with the State and denied
Barrow’s motion.
Barrow waived her right to a jury trial and other trial rights and stipulated to the
prosecution’s evidence pursuant to Minn. R. Crim. P. 26.01, subd. 4, for the purpose of
obtaining appellate review of the purse search issue. The district court found Barrow guilty
as charged and sentenced her to 12 months and 1 day in prison, stayed for 5 years.
The court of appeals affirmed Barrow’s conviction, holding that the automobile
exception to the Fourth Amendment’s search warrant requirement applied to the
warrantless search of Barrow’s purse. State v. Barrow, No. A21-0776, 2022 WL 1531463,
at *2–3 (Minn. App. May 16, 2022).
We granted Barrow’s petition for review to determine whether the automobile
exception applies to the warrantless search of Barrow’s purse.
ANALYSIS
Barrow contends that the district court erred in denying her motion to suppress
because the search of her purse was unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment to the
United States Constitution.
1 When reviewing a district court’s pretrial order on a motion

1 Amici urge us to interpret Article I, Section 10 of the Minnesota Constitution more
broadly than the Fourth Amendment and to hold that the search of Barrow’s purse was
independently unconstitutional under the Minnesota Constitution. But Barrow herself does
not make this argument. B ecause we “generally do not decide issues raised only by an
amicus,” we express no opinion on the constitutionality of the search of Barrow’s purse
under the Minnesota Constitution. Harstad v. City of Woodbury, 916 N.W.2d 540, 545 n.7
(Minn. 2018).
5
to suppress evidence, we review the district court’s legal determinations de novo. State v.
Gauster, 752 N.W.2d 496, 502 (Minn. 2008).
The United States Constitution protect s against “unreasonable searches and
seizures.” U.S. Const. amend. IV. A search conducted without a warrant is unreasonable
unless it satisfies “one of the well-delineated exceptions to the warrant requirement.” State
v. Munson, 594 N.W.2d 128, 135 (Minn. 1999).
One exception to the Fourth Amendment’s sea rch warrant requirement is the
automobile exception. Under the automobile exception, police may “search a car without
a warrant, including closed containers in that car, if there is probable cause to believe the
search will result in a discovery of eviden ce or contraband.” State v. Lester, 874 N.W.2d
768, 771 (Minn. 2016) (citation omitted) (internal quotation marks omitted). The container
must be able to “conceal the object of the search.” United States v. Ross , 456 U.S. 798,
825 (1982). However, the automobile exception does not allow police to conduct a
warrantless search of persons inside the car. United States v. Di Re, 332 U.S. 581, 587
(1948).
The United States Supreme Court has examined the application of the automobile
exception to the search of a purse. In Wyoming v. Houghton , 526 U.S. 295, 298, 300
(1999), an officer conducting a traffic stop had probable cause to believe there was a
controlled substance in the stopped car. The officer thus ordered the occupants out of the
car and began searching the car pursuant to the automobile exception. Id. at 298. The
officer found a purse in the backseat, in which the officer discovered a controlled substance.
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Id. The purse belonged to a passenger of the car, who was charged with possession of a
controlled substance. Id.
The Court held that the search of the purse was valid under the automobile
exception. Id. at 307. T he automobile exception , the Court explained, allows for the
search of “all containers within a car, without qualification as to ownership.” Id. at 301.
Moreover, the Court observed that “[p]assengers, no less than drivers, possess a reduced
expectation of privacy with regard to the property that they transport in cars,” and tha t a
search of “an item of personal property found in a car” is much less intrusive than the
search of a person. Id. at 303. As a result, a passenger’s privacy expectations are
“considerably diminished.” Id. at 304. Moreover, the Court reasoned that a “passenger’s
property” carve -out to the automobile exception would dramatically impair the
government’s “substantial” interest in “the ability to find and seize contraband and
evidence of crime.” Id. at 304–05. Thus, the Court concluded that the “balancing of the
relative interests weighs decidedly in favor of allowing searches of a passen ger’s
belongings.” Id. at 303.
Justice Breyer joined the Court’s opinion, but added in a concurrence:
Less obviously, but in my view also important, is the fact that the
container here at issue, a woman’s purse, was found at a considerable
distance from i ts owner, who did not claim ownership until the officer
discovered her identification while looking through it. Purses are special
containers. They are repositories of especially personal items that people
generally like to keep with them at all times. So I am tempted to say that a
search of a purse involves an intrusion so similar to a search of one’s person
that the same rule should govern both. However, given this Court’s prior
cases, I cannot argue that the fact that the container was a purse automatically
makes a legal difference, for the Court has warned against trying to make
that kind of distinction. But I can say that it would matter if a woman’s purse,
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like a man’s billfold, were attached to her person. It might then amount to a
kind of “oute r clothing,” which under the Court’s cases would properly
receive increased protection. In this case, the purse was separate from the
person, and no one has claimed that, under those circumstances, the type of
container makes a difference. For that reason, I join the Court’s opinion.

Id. at 308 (Breyer, J., concurring) (citations omitted).
We have not previously considered the application of the automobile exception to
the search of a purse, but we have examined the search of a purse in the context of a
premises warrant. In State v. Wynne, 552 N.W.2d 218, 219 (Minn. 1996), the defendant
arrived at her home to find officers searching the home pursuant to a premises warrant.
The warrant did not authorize the search of the defendant’s person. Id. Upon arriving, the
defendant was met by officers, who took her purse into the house and searched it. Id. The
purse contained illegal drugs. Id.
We concluded that the purse fell outside the scope of the premises warrant because
it was not “lying about” the home. Id. at 220. “ ‘[A] search of clothing currently worn,’ ”
we explained, “ ‘is plainly within the ambit of a personal search and outside the scope of a
warrant to search the premises.’ ” Id. (quoting United States v. Micheli, 487 F.2d 429, 431
(1st Cir. 1973)). We further noted that “a shoulder purse is ‘so closely associated with the
person that [it is] identified with and included within the concept of one’s person.’ ” Id.
(alteration in original) (quoting United States v. Graham , 638 F.2d 1111, 1114 (7th Cir.
1981)). Therefore, we determined that “the search of [the defendant’s] purse constituted a
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search of her person” and was unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment.2 Id. at 220,
223.
Relying on our decision in Wynne and Justice Breyer’s concurrence in Houghton,
Barrow argues that the search of her purse pursuant to the automobile exception was akin
to a search of her person, and was therefore unconstitutional under Di Re’s holding that the
automobile exception does not allow police to conduct a warrantless search of persons
inside the car.
We are not persuaded. Wynne is readily distinguishable, as that case involved the
search of a home pursuant to a warrant, not the search of an automobile. See 552 N.W.2d
at 220 (recognizing that the automobile exception did not apply because the search
involved a warrant to search the premises). This distinction is material: unlike a home,
where a person’s privacy expectations “are most heightened,” State v. Carter, 697 N.W.2d
199, 208 (Minn. 2005), the Supreme Court has explained that a passenger’s privacy
expectations in a car are “considerably diminished,” Houghton, 526 U.S. at 304.
Additionally, the Supreme Court has observed that the governmental interest in effective
law enforcement is “substantial” with cars, as the “ready mobility of an automobile creates
a risk that the evidence or contraband will be permanently lost while a warrant is obtained.”
Id. (citation omitted) (internal quotation marks omitted).

2 In State v. Molnau, 904 N.W.2d 449, 452–53 (Minn. 2017), we clarified that in the
context of a premises search, the search of an unattended purse on the premises is not a
search of one’s person.
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Simply put, while “[t]he word ‘automobile’ is not a talisman in whose presence the
Fourth Amendment fades away and disappears,” Coolidge v. New Hampshire , 403 U.S.
443, 461 –62 (1971), automobiles are categorically different under controlling Fourth
Amendment precedent, see Ross, 456 U.S. at 823 (recognizing that the “protection afforded
by the [Fourth] Amendment varies in different settings”). Indeed, Barrow’s position ,
articulated by Justice Breyer’s Houghton concurrence, cannot be squared with the Supreme
Court’s holding in Ross, which disapproved of distinguishing between containers “worthy”
and “unworthy” of Fourth Amendment protection and explained that the automobile
exception “applies equally to all containers” in which there is probable cause to believe
that the object of the search may be found. Ross, 456 U.S. at 822. Elevating a single type
of container—a purse—to the status of one’s “person” would circumvent Ross’s holding
and start us down a path of delineating “worthy” and “unworthy” containers in the context
of automobile searches.
In fact, the Supreme Court has gone down that path but has since repudiated it. In
Arkansas v. Sanders, 442 U.S. 753, 763 (1979), the Court examined the search of personal
luggage under the automobile exception. In language reminiscent of Justice Breyer’s
Houghton concurrence, the Court explained that the luggage could not be searched
pursuant to the automobile exception because “luggage is a common repository for one’s
personal effects, and therefore is inevitably associated with the expectation of privacy.”
Sanders, 442 U.S. at 762, 766. Similarly, in United States v. Chadwick , 433 U.S. 1, 13
(1977), the Supreme Court held that a locked luggage trunk could not be searched pursuant
10
to the automobile exception because “luggage is intended as a repository of personal
effects.”
However, these cases predated Ross, and in California v. Acevedo , 500 U.S. 565,
579 (1991), the Court acknowledged that Ross “explicitly undermined” the automobile
search rules articulated in Sanders and Chadwick. Therefore, the Court overruled Sanders
and Chadwick and eliminated “the dual regimes for automobile searches that uncover
containers” in favor of Ross’s “one clear-cut rule.” Id. The Supreme Court’s repudiation
of shielding “common repositor[ies] for one’s personal effects,” Sanders, 442 U.S. at 762,
from a search under the automobile exception confirms that Barrow’s analogous argument
should be rejected.
Not only is Barrow’s argument inconsistent with controlling case law on the
automobile exception, but Barrow’s approach would also fail to provide a “workable
accommodation between the needs of law enforcement and the interest s protected by the
Fourth Amendment.” Oliver v. United States , 466 U.S. 170, 181 (1984). Barrow and
amici’s definitions of a “purse” would sweep much more broadly than the handbag Barrow
was carrying. Barrow defines a purse as “a bag used to contain personal effects and closely
carried, regardless of the gender of its wearer or the style of the bag.” Amici echo Justice
Breyer’s definition of a purse as a “repositor[y] of especially personal items that people
generally like to keep with them at all times.” Houghton, 526 U.S. at 308 (Bre yer, J.,
concurring). But under either definition, many bags could be considered “purses,” such as
backpacks, fanny packs, briefcases, and duffle bags.
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Barrow offers no discernable, workable distinction between the quintessential purse
and bags that we have considered to be searchable “containers” under the automobile
exception. See State v. Search, 472 N.W.2d 850, 853 (Minn. 1991) (upholding the
warrantless search of a duffle bag under the automobile exception); State v. Ludtke ,
306 N.W.2d 111, 112–14 (Minn. 1981) (upholding the warrantless search of a satchel
located in a car, although under a pre-Ross legal framework). Instead, Barrow’s rule would
have the legality of a search turn on something the Supreme Court dis favors: a “highly
sophisticated set of rules, qualified by all sorts of ifs, ands, and buts and requiring the
drawing of subtle nuances and hairline distinc tions.”3 Oliver , 466 U.S. at 181 (citation
omitted) (internal quotation marks omitted); see also Lange v. California , 594 U.S. ___,
141 S. Ct. 2011, 2033 (2021 ) (explaining that under the Fourth Amendment , the Court
gives “great weight to the essential interest in readily administrable rules” (citation
omitted) (internal quotation marks omitted)).
Finally, Barrow contends that allowing searches of worn purses under the
automobile exception would cause gender inequality in application of the Fourth
Amendment because women disproportionately wear purses. As an initial matter, Barrow
does not explain how this argument is legally relevant under the Fourth Amendment. But

3 Barrow also points to search -incident-to-arrest cases to inform our analysis. But
exceptions to the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement are “ ‘jealously and carefully
drawn’ ” and “based on particular exigencies of a situation.” State v. Robb , 605 N.W.2d
96, 100 (Minn. 2000) (quoting Coolidge, 403 U.S. at 455). As the Supreme Court has
recognized, the search-incident-to-arrest exception and the automobile exception are based
on “wholly different” policy justifications. See Chambers v. Maroney , 399 U.S. 42, 49
(1970). We therefo re decline Barrow’s invitation to graft search -incident-to-arrest
jurisprudence onto our automobile exception case law.
12
even assuming that her argument is somehow relevant to our Fourth Amendment analysis,
Barrow’s argument misses the mark because, as described above, her definition of a
“purse” would extend to bags commonly worn by men and women, including backpacks,
fanny packs, briefcases, and duffle bags. Her argument, therefore, does not eliminate the
gender inequality she perceives would exist if “purses” were not treated like one’s person
for purposes of the automobile exception.
Therefore, applying our holding to the facts here, we conclude that the warrantless
search of Barrow’s purse was constitutional. Barrow does not contest that the officer had
probable cause to believe contraband or evidence of a crime was in the car when the officer
smelled the odor of marijuana in the car. At that point, the officer was authorized to
conduct a warrantless search of the car and any closed containers within the car that could
contain the object of the search (here, marijuana). See Houghton, 526 U.S. at 307; Lester,
874 N.W.2d at 771. Because Barrow’s purse is a container that was inside the car at the
time probable cause arose, and her purse could contain marijuana, the officer was permitted
to search the purse under the automobile exception. See Lester, 874 N.W.2d at 771.
CONCLUSION
For the foregoing reasons, we affirm the decision of the court of appeals.
Affirmed.

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C O N C U R R E N C E
CHUTICH, Justice (concurring).
I agree with the court that, under the federal constitution, the warrantless search of
Barrow’s purse was lawful, and the decision of the court of appeals should be affirmed. I
write separately, however, to note that the outcome may have been different had appellant
Amber Kay Barrow raised an independent state constitutional claim. I believe that
Article I, Section 10, of the Minnesota Constitution may afford passengers like Barrow
greater search and seizure protections than currently provided under federal constitutional
precedent, especially when considering the application of the automobile exception.
Over the past half century, federal and state jurisprudence has made clear that the
federal constitution acts as a floor—not a ceiling — when it comes to protecting individual
rights. PruneYard Shopping Ctr. v. Robins, 447 U.S. 74, 81 (1980) (recognizing that it is
well within the “authority of the State to exercise its police power or its sovereign right to
adopt in its own Constitution individual liberties more expansive than those conferred by
the Federal Constitution”); City of Golden Valley v. Wiebesick , 899 N.W.2d 152, 157
(Minn. 2017) (noting that “we may interpret the Minnesota Constitution to provide greater
protection to individuals than the United States Constitution”). During this same time,
many practitioners and jurists alike have encouraged state courts to do just that —expand
protections for people under state constitutional law. See generally William J. Brennan,
Jr., State Constitutions and t he Protection of Individual Rights , 90 Harv. L. Rev. 489
(1977).

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State supreme courts have responded to that call. Nationwide, by the turn of the
century, state supreme courts had decided “hundreds of cases in which they interpret the
state constitution to provide more generous protection for individual liberties than similar
provisions of the U.S. Constitution.” James A. Gardner, State Constitutional Rights as
Resistance to National Power: Toward a Functional Theory of State Constitutions, 91 Geo.
L.J. 1003, 1032–33 (2003).
In this case, the court accurately explains how controlling Fourth Amendment
precedent requires us to affirm Barrow’s conviction. For the following reasons , I am not
sure that the result would be the same under the Minnesota Constitution.
The creeping expansion of the automobile exception, illustrated by the Supreme
Court precedents of United States v. Ross , 456 U.S. 798 (1982), California v. Acevedo ,
500 U.S. 565 (1991), and Wyoming v. Houghton, 526 U.S. 295 (1999), has been the subject
of much scholarly criticism. See, e.g., Martin R. Gardner, Searches and Seizures of
Automobiles and Their Contents: Fourth Amendment Considerations in a Post –Ross
World, 62 Neb. L. Rev. 1, 35 (1983) (explaining that Ross “appears to have created a new
probable cause exemption to the warrant rule without providing satisfactory justification
for abandoning the preference for warrants”); Carol A. Chase, Privacy Takes a Back
Seat: Putting the Automobile Exception Back on Track After Several Wrong Turns, 41 B.C.
L. Rev. 71, 101 (1999) (concluding that the expansion of the automobile exception has
“left a gaping hole in the rights protected under the Fourth Amendment”); 3 Wayne R.
LaFave, Search And Seizure: A Treatise on the Fourth Amendment § 7.2(d) (6th ed. 2020)

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(suggesting that the Supreme Court’s expansion of the automobile exception manifests
“considerable ambivalence about the warrant requirement”).
Given our consistent recognition that warrantless searches are “presumptively
unreasonable,” State v. Diede, 795 N.W.2d 836, 846 (Minn. 2011) (citation omitted)
(internal quotation marks omitted), the devaluing of the warrant requirement by Ross may
justify us interpreting the Minnesota Constitution more broadly in this specific context.
See Kahn v. Griffin, 701 N.W.2d 815, 828 (Minn. 2005) (explaining that we will apply the
state constitution when “the Supreme Court has retrenched on Bill of Rights issues, or if
we determine that federal precedent does not adequately protect our citizens’ basic rights
and liberties”).
The particular facts of this case reveal further excesses of the automobile exception.
Barrow was neither a driver nor an owner of the car. In fact, the record does not reflect
what relationship, if any, Barrow had with the driver. The Sup reme Court has held that
there is no “passenger’s property” exclusion from the federal automobile exception, largely
because a passenger “will often be engaged in a common enterprise with the driver.”
Houghton, 526 U.S. at 304–05. But that reasoning is dubious. See LaFave, supra, § 7.2(d)
(noting that the Court cited “not a whit of empirical evidence” for its common enterprise
assumption); Daniel J. Hewitt, Don’t Accept Rides From Strangers: The Supreme Court
Hastens the Demise of Passenger Privacy in Am erican Automobiles , 90 J. Crim. L. &
Criminology 875, 902 (2000) (“ Without any foundation for its assertion, the Court
abandoned the proposition that Sandra Houghton deserved any status as an individual in
that car.”). Like the dissent in Houghton , I am n ot persuaded “that the mere spatial

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association between a passenger and a driver provides an acceptable basis for presuming
that they are partners in crime.” Houghton, 526 U.S. at 310 (Stevens, J., dissenting).
Moreover, the invasion of Barrow’s reasonable privacy expectations was not slight.
Purses are “repositories of especially personal items that people generally like to keep with
them at all times.” Id. at 308 (Breyer, J., concurring). We recognized as much in State v.
Wynne, when we concluded that a held purse is “so closely associated with the person that
[it is] identified with and included within the concept of one’s person.”
4 552 N.W.2d 218,
220 (Minn. 1996) (alteration in original) (citation omitted) (internal quotation marks
omitted). It seems to me that before such a severe invasion of a passenger’s legitimate
privacy interests occurs, there must be some individualized, articulable suspicion to believe
that the passenger was involved in criminal activity.
5
If we placed constraints on the automobile exception under our state constitution,
we would not be the first court to do so. Other state courts have recognized that the
automobile exception under federal law does not sufficiently protect the privacy interests
underpinning the Fourth Amendment. Invoking their state constitutions, some state courts

4 Here, when no one disputes that the purse was Barrow’s and the record shows that
the purse was within her reach in the car, I would co nclude that the purse was closely
associated with her.

5 It is true, as the court notes, that the Supreme Court has expressed its preference for
“readily administrable rules” in the Fourth Amendment context. Lange v. California ,
594 U.S. ___, 141 S. Ct. 2011, 2033 (2021) (citation omitted) (internal quotation marks
omitted). But the Supreme Court has also “ ‘consistently eschewed bright-line rules’ ” in
examining reasonableness under the Fourth Amendment. State v. Lemert , 843 N.W.2d
227, 232–33 (Minn. 2014) (quoting Ohio v. Robinette, 519 U.S. 33, 39 (1996)). We should
heed the latter principle in analyzing automobile exception claims involving passengers
under Article I, Section 10, of the Minnesota Constitution.

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have required an additional showing of exigent circumstances to trigger the automobile
exception. See, e.g., Commonwealth v. Alexander, 243 A.3d 177, 207 (Pa. 2020); State v.
Bauder, 924 A.2d 38, 50 (Vt. 2007); State v. Gomez, 932 P.2d 1, 12 (N.M. 1997) . Other
states have interpreted their state constitutions to place other limits on the federal
automobile exception. See, e.g., State v. Cora, 167 A.3d 633, 642 (N.H. 2017) (permitting
a search under the automobile exception only when “the police have probable cause to
believe that a plainly visible item in the vehicle is contraband” (emphasis added)); State v.
Tibbles, 236 P.3d 885, 887–88 (Wash. 2010) (holding that probable cause must be coupled
with a specific warrant exception, like plain view or exigent circumstances, to justify a
warrantless search of an automobile); State v. Elison , 14 P.3d 456, 470–71 (Mont. 2000)
(same). The conclusions of our sister states may properly inform whether we have a
principled basis to construe Article I, Section 10, more broadly than the Fourth
Amendment. See Friedman v. Comm’r of Pub. Safety , 473 N.W.2d 828, 831 & n.3
(Minn. 1991) (reviewing other states’ expansions of the right to counsel under state
constitutions to determine if we should do the same).
We have recognized that our state constitution is more sensitive to privacy
intrusions concerning automobiles and their occupants than the federal constitution. For
example, in Michigan Departmen t of State Police v. Sitz , 496 U.S. 444, 447 (1990), the
Supreme Court held that a system of temporary driver sobriety checkpoints did not violate

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the Fourth Amendment. But in Ascher v. Commissioner of Public Safety, 519 N.W.2d 183,
186–87 (Minn. 1994), we explained that Sitz inadequately balanced the state’s interests and
individual privacy interests. We therefore required a greater showing under our state
constitution before Minnesota drivers could be stopped and investigated: drivers could not
be stopped uniformly at temporary sobriety checkpoints, but only when officers had an
“objective individualized articulable suspicion of criminal wrongdoing.” Id. at 187.
Similarly, in Atwater v. City of Lago Vista, 532 U.S. 318, 354 (2001), the Supreme
Court held that the Fourth Amendment does not forbid a warrantless arrest of a driver for a
minor criminal offense. But in State v. Askerooth, 681 N.W.2d 353, 362–63 (Minn. 2004),
we concluded that Atwater, like Sitz, inadequately balanced the state and individual privacy
interests, particularly given that the “holding in Atwater may affect vast numbers of our
residents in their interactions with the police on a daily basis.” We therefore held that
under the Minnesota Constitution, principles of reasonableness g overn the scope and
duration of a search or seizure for a minor traffic violation. Id. at 363.
In sum, our precedent, along with the informed views of scholars and other state
courts, make me question whether the Minnesota Constitution allows the state to
automatically examine a passenger’s purse in a car without some additional showing.
Ultimately, however, whether the broad automobile exception under federal law comports
with the Minnesota Constitution, particularly as it pertains to the effects of passengers,
must be decided in a case in which the issue is preserved and all parties have fully briefed
and argued the state constitutional law question. Because the issue was neither raised nor

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briefed by the parties in this case, I concur in the court’s decision under the Fourth
Amendment.

THISSEN, Justice (concurring).
I join in the concurrence of Justice Chutich.