Pollak, Vida & Barer

In Case v. Montana, published January 14, 2026, a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the decision of the Montana State Supreme Court. The defendant, the inhabitant of a house, called his ex-girlfriend threatening to commit suicide. When she said she would call the police, he responded that he would shoot them too. Sounds she heard during the call suggested he had shot himself. She called the police and rushed to the house. The officers knocked on the doors and yelled with no response. They shined their flashlights into the house, and made out empty beer cans, an empty handgun holster,, and a notepad with writing on it suggesting a suicide note. The officers decided to enter the house to render emergency aid. They equipped themselves with long-barrel firearms and a ballistic shield in case the entrance sparked a confrontation. The officers entered through the front door, announcing themselves loudly and continuing to call out as the walked through the house. The defendant was hiding in a closet upstairs. When an officer entered the room, the defendant threw open the closet curtain and appeared behind it holding a black object that looked like a gun. The officer shot the defendant, who survived. A handgun was found near where the defendant had stood. The defendant was prosecuted for assaulting a police officer. He moved to suppress the evidence obtained as a result of the entry, arguing the officers violated the 4th Amendment by entering without a warrant. The motion was denied, and the defendant convicted. A divided state supreme court upheld the trial court’s ruling. The majority rejected the defendant’s argument that the officers needed probable cause to believe the inhabitant of the house needed emergency aid.

The Supreme Court unanimously agreed. The emergency aid doctrine is a recognized exception to the 4th Amendment’s requirement that a warrant is required to enter a house. While the Court has rejected a broader “community caretaking” standard for warrantless entry, the probable-cause standard is peculiarly related to criminal investigations. The body of law applying it to investigating crimes would not fit the non-criminal, non-investigatory setting here. Instead, the standard is simply where an officer had an objectively reasonable basis for believing his entry was direly needed to prevent or deal with serious harm. An emergency-aid entry provides no basis for to search the premises beyond what is reasonably needed to dela with the emergency while maintaining the officers’ safety. The facts here gave the officers an objectively reasonable basis for believing their intervention was needed to prevent serious harm. The objective reasonableness of the officers’ conduct is evaluated by looking at the totality of the circumstances. The officers’ conduct was reasonable. The 4th Amendment did not require the officers to leave the defendant to his fate.

Justice Sotomayor concurred but wrote separately that when dealing with a mentally impaired person officers might attempt deescalation before entering a house. Justice Gorsuch also concurred, but wrote separately to emphasize the common law basis for the emergency-aid exception to the warrant requirement.