Landowners sue state for spying on their property

Two private property owners have sued Tennessee for setting up motion-activated cameras on their land, charging trespassing and illegal search.

"In America, private land is not open to public officers," said Joshua Windham, a lawyer for the two Tennesseans, Terry Rainwaters and Hunter Hollingsworth.

"That's especially true under the Tennessee Constitution, which requires state officers in every corner of the state, from the city to the country, to get a warrant before searching private property," said Windham of the Insitute for Justice.

Rainwaters lives, farms and hunts on the 136 acres he owns along the Big Sandy River in rural Tennessee. He has a "no trespassing" sign on his gate.

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"Yet agents of the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency ignored that warning, entering his property to set up and retrieve cameras that they used to watch for hunting violations," the Institute for Justice said.

Rainwaters said that in 2017 he found a couple of cameras set up on his land. He looked later, and they were gone.

"It's deeply disturbing that I never know whether a state game officer is walking around my land or watching my private activities," he said. "If the state can put cameras on my farm whenever they want, that really destroys the notion that this land is private. And having unannounced visitors walking around our farm during hunting season isn’t just intrusive, it’s dangerous."

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The case centers on a Supreme Court decision nearly a century ago that ruled the Fourth Amendment prohibition against warrantless searches does not apply to "open fields."

"This misguided doctrine ignores a fundamental point of the Fourth Amendment: to ensure that Americans are secure on their properties. Fortunately, the Tennessee Constitution provides greater protection from unreasonable searches of private property than the Supreme Court says applies under the U.S. Constitution, and the Tennessee Supreme Court has rejected the 'open fields' doctrine several times," IJ said.

"No trespassing signs apply to the government, too," said IJ attorney Jaba Tsitsuashvili. "Nobody thinks it’s OK for government agents to set up a tent on your property and watch you day and night. How is installing a camera on your property to do the same thing any different?"