In United States v. Ramirez, --- F.4th ---, No. 22-50045 (9th Cir. 2024), the Court affirmed the district court’s denial of a motion to suppress. The issue was whether a police officer violates the Fourth Amendment by asking about parole status during a traffic stop.
Can a police officer during a traffic stop ask someone if he is on parole? Appellant Victor Ramirez contends that asking that question impinges on the Fourth Amendment because it gives the police license to search a parolee—who typically agrees to future searches as a condition of his release—for general criminal activity unrelated to the traffic stop. We disagree and hold that an officer may ask about parole status because it reasonably relates to the officer’s safety and imposes a negligible burden.When the police pull someone over for a traffic violation, the officer can obviously investigate that traffic infraction. Rodriguez v. United States, 575 U.S. 348, 354 (9th Cir. 2015) (analogizing a traffic stop to a Terry stop). But a traffic stop “exceeding the time needed to handle the matter for which the stop was made violates the Constitution’s shield against unreasonable seizures.” Id. at 350. Thus, “[t]o be lawful, a traffic stop must be limited in its scope.” Taylor, 60 F.4th at 1239 (citing Rodriguez, 575 U.S. at 354–55).Besides investigating the traffic violation that warranted the stop, a police officer can also make “ordinary inquiries incident to the traffic stop” and “attend to related safety USA V. RAMIREZ 7 concerns.” Id. (quoting Rodriguez, 575 U.S. at 354–55).1 The Supreme Court has held that lawful “inquiries incident to a traffic stop” may include “checking [a] driver’s license, determining whether there are outstanding warrants against the driver, and inspecting the automobile’s registration and proof of insurance.” Rodriguez, 575 U.S. at 355. The Court has also held that “attend[ing] to related safety concerns” includes “certain negligibly burdensome precautions in order to complete his mission safely.” Id. at 354, 356. So, for example, an officer may order the driver of a vehicle to exit the vehicle during a traffic stop. Id. at 356 (citing Pennsylvania v. Mimms, 434 U.S. 106, 110 (1977) (per curiam) (“Establishing a face-to-face confrontation diminishes the possibility, otherwise substantial, that the driver can make unobserved movements; this, in turn, reduces the likelihood that the officer will be the victim of an assault.”)).Asking someone about his parole status is substantially similar to running a criminal history check during a traffic stop—a practice that we have held passes muster under the Fourth Amendment.We thus hold that asking someone about his parole status during a traffic stop does not offend the Fourth Amendment.
