The legal battle over a $75 boating fine where liberty itself is at stake

Pennsylvania Police boat © Sara Rose

On a pleasant May evening in 2016, Fred Karash and four friends were enjoying a boat trip on Lake Erie when, without warning, they were stopped by law enforcement officers and detained for more than an hour while the officers searched Fred's 23-foot cabin cruiser.

The officers, who admitted they had no reason to suspect the boaters had violated any law or regulation, claimed authority under state law to search any boat at any time on any Pennsylvania waterway to conduct a "safety inspection."

But that sort of unfettered discretion violates the Fourth Amendment, which protects against unwarranted and even vindictive government incursions upon our privacy by requiring that authorities have probable cause to search someone's home or property. That safeguard, as the Pennsylvania Supreme Court has recognized, "is second to none in its importance in delineating the dignity of the individual living in a free society."

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