Against.

Quoted: If the house is my property they better have a warrant. Though if a person lives in rental property and the owner of the property gives consent then there nothing I can do about it.

Police do not need a warrant to go onto your property.

A rental property owner cannot give consent to search your leased property.

Quoted: I think the implications are state specific.  In some states (like ND), curtilage is considered part of the house, so this action would in fact be an illegal search of your house.

I thought it was federally defined and refers to the immediate area in common usage surronding the house or any out buildings. ie your storage shed you reguarlly use is covered, the abandoned overgrown barn is not.





Curtilage is a legal term describing the enclosed area of land around a dwelling. It is distinct from the dwelling by virtue of lacking a roof, but distinct from the area outside the enclosure in that it is enclosed within a wall or barrier of some sort.

It is typically treated as being legally coupled with the dwelling it surrounds despite the fact that it might commonly be considered "outdoors".

This distinction is important under US law for cases dealing with burglary and with self defense under the Castle Doctrine. Under Florida law, burglary encompasses the English common-law definition and adds (among other things) curtilage to the protected area of the dwelling into which intrusion is prohibited. Similarly, a homeowner does not have to retreat within the curtilage under Florida's Castle Doctrine.

The curtilage (like the home) provides a reasonable expectation of privacy and hence is protected from unreasonable search and seizure under the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. See Open fields doctrine for how courts distinguish curtilage and "open fields", with the latter not providing privacy.

Quoted: Quoted: I think the implications are state specific.  In some states (like ND), curtilage is considered part of the house, so this action would in fact be an illegal search of your house. I thought it was federally defined and refers to the immediate area in common usage surronding the house or any out buildings. ie your storage shed you reguarlly use is covered, the abandoned overgrown barn is not. Curtilage is a legal term describing the enclosed area of land around a dwelling. It is distinct from the dwelling by virtue of lacking a roof, but distinct from the area outside the enclosure in that it is enclosed within a wall or barrier of some sort. It is typically treated as being legally coupled with the dwelling it surrounds despite the fact that it might commonly be considered "outdoors". This distinction is important under US law for cases dealing with burglary and with self defense under the Castle Doctrine. Under Florida law, burglary encompasses the English common-law definition and adds (among other things) curtilage to the protected area of the dwelling into which intrusion is prohibited. Similarly, a homeowner does not have to retreat within the curtilage under Florida's Castle Doctrine. The curtilage (like the home) provides a reasonable expectation of privacy and hence is protected from unreasonable search and seizure under the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. See Open fields doctrine for how courts distinguish curtilage and "open fields", with the latter not providing privacy.

Open fields doctrine
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For other uses, see Open-field (disambiguation).
The open fields doctrine is a U.S. legal doctrine created judicially for purposes of evaluating claims of an unreasonable search by the government in violation of the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which states:

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.

The open fields doctrine was first articulated by the U.S. Supreme Court in Hester v. United States[1], which stated that “the special protection accorded by the Fourth Amendment to the people in their ‘persons, houses, papers, and effects,’ is not extended to the open fields."[2] This opinion appears to be decided on the basis that "open fields are not a "constitutionally protected area" because they cannot be construed as "persons, houses, papers, [or] effects."

This method of reasoning gave way with the arrival of the landmark case Katz v. U.S.,[3] which established a two-part test for what constitutes a search within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. The relevant criteria are "first that a person have exhibited an actual (subjective) expectation of privacy and, second, that the expectation be one that society is prepared to recognize as reasonable'."[4] Under this new analysis of the Fourth Amendment, a search of an object or area where a person has no reasonable expectation of privacy is, in a legal sense, not a search at all. That search, therefore, does not trigger the protections of the Fourth Amendment.

In Oliver v. United States[5], the Supreme Court held that a privacy expectation regarding an open field is unreasonable:

…open fields do not provide the setting for those intimate activities that the Amendment is intended to shelter from government interference or surveillance. There is no societal interest in protecting the privacy of those activities, such as the cultivation of crops, that occur in open fields. [6]

Courts have continuously held that entry into an open field--whether trespass or not--is not a search within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. No matter what steps a person takes, he or she cannot create a reasonable privacy expectation in an open field, because it is an area incapable of supporting an expectation of privacy as a matter of constitutional law. In situations where the police allege that what was searched was an open field, this has the practical effect of shifting the argument from whether any given expectation of privacy is reasonable, to whether the given place is actually an open field or some other type of area like curtilage. This is because a person can have a reasonable expectation of privacy in areas classed as such.


[edit] Distinguishing open fields from curtilage
While open fields are not protected by the Fourth Amendment, the curtilage, or outdoor area immediately surrounding the home, is. Courts have treated this area as an extension of the house and as such subject to all the privacy protections afforded a person’s home (unlike a person's open fields) under the Fourth Amendment.

An area is curtilage if it "harbors the intimate activity associated with the sanctity of a man's home and the privacies of life."[7] Courts make this determination by examining "whether the area is included within an enclosure surrounding the home, the nature of the uses to which the area is put, and the steps taken by the resident to protect the area from observation by people passing by." Theoretically, many structures might extend the curtilage protection to the areas immediately surrounding them. The courts have gone so far as to treat a tent as a home for Fourth Amendment purposes in the past. [9][10][11] It is possible that the area immediately surrounding a tent (or any structure used as a home) might be considered curtilage.

Despite this rather broad interpretation of curtilage, the courts seem willing to find areas to be outside of the curtilage if they are in any way separate from the home (by a fence, great distance, other structures, even certain plants).[12]