Florida v. Jardines

Florida v. Jardines, 569 U.S. 1 (2013), was a Supreme Court of the United States case in which it was ruled that police use of a trained detection dog to sniff for narcotics on the front porch of a private home is a "search" within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution, and therefore, without consent, requires both probable cause and a search warrant.

In 2006, police in Miami, Florida received an anonymous tip that a home was being used as a marijuana grow house. They led a drug-sniffing police dog to the front door of the home, and the dog alerted at the front door to the scent of contraband. A search warrant was issued, which led to the arrest of the homeowner.

Twenty-seven U.S. states and the federal government, among other parties, had supported Florida's argument that the use of a police dog was an acceptable form of minimally invasive warrantless search. In a 5–4 decision, the Court disagreed, despite three previous cases in which the Court had held that a dog sniff was not a search when deployed against luggage at an airport, against vehicles in a drug interdiction checkpoint and against vehicles during routine traffic stops. The Court made clear by this ruling that it considered the deployment of a police dog at the front door of a private residence to be a separate type of situation.