When can law enforcement officers enter a person’s home, without a warrant, in order to provide emergency assistance? How sure must the officers be that assistance is needed before an emergency entry is allowed? These are the questions at the heart of Case v. Montana, 607 U.S. __ (2026), an opinion issued by the Supreme Court last month.
Fourth Amendment basics. The Fourth Amendment provides in part that “[t]he right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated.” U.S. Const. Am. IV. Case law establishes that an entry into a person’s home by law enforcement is reasonable, and therefore consistent with the Fourth Amendment, only when supported by a warrant or an exception to the warrant requirement. See, e.g., Lange v. California, 594 U.S. 295 (2021) (stating that the law “generally” requires a warrant “before a law enforcement officer can enter a home without permission,” subject to “certain exceptions”).
Brigham City v. Stuart, 547 U.S. 398 (2006). One of the exceptions to the warrant requirement is the emergency aid exception, sometimes also called the emergency assistance exception or simply the emergency doctrine. That exception was first clearly articulated in Brigham City, a case that began when officers responded to a noise complaint. Arriving at the residence in question, they saw through a window an altercation between several adults and a juvenile. The juvenile punched one of the adults in the face, causing the adult to spit blood. The officers entered the residence and ended the altercation. Based on what they saw in the home, they arrested several people and charged them with contributing to the delinquency of a minor and other crimes. The defendants moved to suppress, arguing that the officers’ warrantless entry violated the Fourth Amendment. The case reached the Supreme Court, which disagreed. It concluded that “police may enter a home without a warrant when they have an objectively reasonable basis for believing that an occupant is seriously injured or imminently threatened with such injury.”
The issue in Case: how sure must officers be that there’s an emergency? The facts of Case are summarized in the Court’s syllabus:
Montana police officers responded to the home of petitioner William Case after his ex-girlfriend called 9–1–1 to report that he was threatening suicide and may have shot himself. The officers knocked on the doors and yelled into an open window, but got no response. They could see an empty handgun holster and something that looked like a suicide note inside, and they ultimately decided to enter the home to render emergency aid. When one officer approached a bedroom closet in which Case was hiding, Case threw open the closet curtain while holding an object that looked like a gun. Fearing that he was about to be shot, the officer shot and injured Case. An ambulance was called to take Case to the hospital, and officers found a handgun next to where Case had stood. Case was charged with assaulting a police officer. Case moved to suppress all evidence obtained from the home entry, arguing that the police violated the Fourth Amendment by entering without a warrant.
As the case worked its way through the courts, the principal issue was what the Brigham City opinion meant when it said that officers must have an “objectively reasonable basis for believing” that emergency assistance is needed. The Supreme Court eventually granted certiorari to review the following question: “Whether law enforcement may enter a home without a search warrant based on less than probable cause that an emergency is occurring, or whether the emergency-aid exception requires probable cause.”
Case argued that the standard should be probable cause, and that anything less would not adequately protect the sanctity of the home. Montana replied that probable cause is a standard inextricably tied to the context of criminal investigations and should not be used for assessing emergencies that arise outside that setting. Some commentators wondered whether the Court might connect the Brigham City standard to the lower level of reasonable suspicion.
As it turned out, the Court unanimously sided with Montana, rejecting the probable cause standard – and other standards familiar from the criminal law context – as “inapt.” Justice Kagan’s opinion for the Court reasoned that Brigham City had “fashioned its own standard” that required “no further gloss.” The Court concluded that the standard was satisfied in this case given the evidence suggesting that Case was considering suicide or might even have attempted it.
Justice Sotomayor wrote a concurring opinion emphasizing that it is not always reasonable, and may often be counterproductive, for law enforcement to force entry into a home occupied by a mentally disturbed and suicidal individual. Justice Gorsuch wrote a concurring opinion arguing that the emergency aid exception is grounded in the common law of property, which allows one individual to enter another’s property when necessary to prevent death or serious injury.
Is Case helpful? Apparently, lower courts across the country had divided over whether Brigham City’s standard meant probable cause. Case clarifies that it does not, so that’s something. But the Court did not flesh out the “objectively reasonable basis” test or indicate how it differs from probable cause. Beyond ruling that the specific set of facts before the Court met the standard, I’m not sure that Case provides much guidance.
Suppose an officer is dispatched to a home based on an anonymous call reporting that the occupant of the residence is in the midst of a drug overdose. The officer goes to the home. No one answers the door. A car is in the driveway but nothing is obviously amiss. Does the officer have an “objectively reasonable basis” to enter the home? If not, what additional facts and circumstances might give rise to such a basis? Nothing in Case helps answer those questions.
Further reading on the emergency aid exception. I wrote about the emergency doctrine years ago in this post, summarizing a couple of cases and a North Carolina statute that are pertinent. A few more recent cases that may help readers get a feel for how courts are applying the doctrine are:
- United States v. Giambro, 126 F.4th 46 (1st Cir. 2025) (an elderly man told his son that the man’s wife had recently died; the son took his father to the hospital based on concerns about the father’s mental health; the hospital contacted police, who entered the elderly man’s home to check on his wife; officers found firearms in the home, which the man was not legally authorized to possess; he moved to suppress the guns, but the trial court ruled that the emergency doctrine applied; the reviewing concluded otherwise, as there was no indication of an ongoing emergency, only of a past death, and there was no evidence that the wife was inside the home; the court further reasoned that any concern about an emergency was undercut by officers’ failure to talk to the man or his son first, stating that “officers may not ignore obvious and available options for gathering facts to determine if an emergency actually exists”)
- Reed v. Campbell County, Kentucky, 80 F.4th 734 (6th Cir. 2023) (officers were dispatched to a home after a neighbor called to report a possible domestic altercation; officers noticed nothing amiss, though one saw through a window a woman that he thought looked “timid”; a man answered the door and refused to allow the officer in without a warrant; the officers forced entry and held the man at gunpoint; he sued, alleging a violation of the Fourth Amendment; the trial court denied the officers’ motion for summary judgment based on qualified immunity, and the reviewing court affirmed; the 911 call was vague and insufficient by itself to support an emergency entry, and no facts at the scene suggested ongoing danger; the officer’s perception that the woman looked “timid” was purely subjective)
- Cannon v. Filip, 965 F.3d 313 (7th. Cir. 2025) (a 911 call reported that a man was beating a woman in the home and had “lost his mind”; responding officers heard loud noises inside the residence; although some evidence later suggested that the noises were a result of the man and the woman having consensual sex, the reviewing court found that the emergency doctrine applied; “there is nothing to suggest that a reasonable officer in the Defendants’ position would have been able to identify the source of the loud sounds”)
- Luethje v. Kyle, 131 F.4th 1179 (10th Cir. 2025) (officers “did not have an objectively reasonable belief in an ongoing emergency” that could support their warrantless entry into a residence and use of a police K-9 to bite the home’s occupant; “the only information the deputies had before arriving was that an unidentified male had broken a window and fled the scene” and the deputies “observed nothing further that would suggest an ongoing emergency”)
Connection to the community caretaking doctrine and the exigent circumstances exception. The emergency doctrine likely overlaps somewhat with the community caretaking doctrine and perhaps also the concept of exigent circumstances. The seminal North Carolina case on community caretaking is State v. Smathers, 232 N.C. App. 120 (2014). Smathers holds that an officer may conduct a search or seizure for a general safety or welfare purpose when “an objectively reasonable basis for a community caretaking function is shown [and] . . . the public need or interest outweighs the intrusion upon the privacy of the individual.” Many emergency situations would surely meet that standard. However, while the doctrines appear to overlap, the community caretaking doctrine may apply even without an imminent threat of a serious injury. In that regard, it is broader in scope than the emergency doctrine. The balancing test announced in Smathers may be more elastic than the “objectively reasonable basis” test that is part of the emergency doctrine. On the other hand, the Supreme Court of the United States suggested in Caniglia v. Strom, 593 U.S. 194 (2021), that the community caretaking doctrine may apply primarily to interactions involving motor vehicles, while the emergency doctrine certainly applies to residences as well. This prior post focuses on community caretaking.
As for exigent circumstances, I have always thought of exigent circumstances as an exception to the warrant requirement that applies when officers have probable cause to search for evidence of a crime and need to do so immediately so that there is no time to seek a warrant. (I wrote about that, and about a Fourth Circuit case that challenged my thinking, in this prior post.) By contrast, the emergency doctrine often applies when there is not probable cause to believe that a crime has been committed, and indeed, when no criminal investigation is ongoing. Still, courts sometimes describe the emergency doctrine as a part of a broader concept of exigency. See, e.g., Lange v. California, 594 U.S. 295 (2021) (“One important exception is for exigent circumstances. . . . Over the years, this Court has identified several such exigencies,” including for emergencies under Brigham City); United States v. Curry, 965 F.3d 313 (4th Cir. 2020) (en banc) (describing the exigent circumstances doctrine as “encompass[ing]” the emergency doctrine). Whether the emergency doctrine is a subset of exigent circumstances or something altogether different, its contours are at least very slightly clearer as a result of Case.