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Until recently, New York courts have seldom utilized race as a factor when determining whether law enforcement officers have violated an individuals rights under the Fourth Amendment. This might seem counterintuitive considering that the Fourth Amendment is primarily concerned with protecting individual privacy against arbitrary intrusion by the government. This article will examine, however, how courts are considering race as a factor in a Fourth Amendment analysis, and how defendants are beginning to raise this issue in suppression motions.

In the past, other than a generic prohibition against discriminatory law enforcement procedures, race-based analyses at the appellate level were occasionally found only in concurring or dissenting opinions. For example, Justice Green, dissenting in People v. Hicks, 116 A.D.2d 150 (4th Dept 1986), opined that a fair reading of this record reveals that the defendant was stopped solely because he is Black. In People v. Price, 186 A.D.3d 903 (3d Dept 2020), Justice Lynch questioned whether a traffic stop was racially motivated. In a concurring opinion he noted that, although the outcome in this particular case will not change, we would not be remiss in not taking this opportunity to emphasize that bias, racial or otherwise, will not be allowed to legitimize the unconstitutional intrusion upon any citizens freedom.

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Race and the Fourth Amendment: Defendants Raise Issue in ... - Law.com