A federal lawsuit filed Monday against the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission seeks to strike down a state law that gives PFBC officers broad authority to conduct warrantless searches on private land. The lawsuit was filed by Pennsylvania resident Tim Thomas, who accuses a waterways conservation officer of snooping around his lake house, harassing him and his wife, and issuing him bunk citations in 2023.
Thomas claims in the lawsuit that conservation officer Ty Moon conducted multiple unconstitutional searches at his lakeside cabin in Susquehanna that summer. He says that on two occasions, Moon entered his property without his or his wife’s consent to search for evidence of potential fish and boat violations. Thomas also accuses Moon of harassing them and spying on them with binoculars from the other side of the lake. In both instances, Moon issued Thomas a citation, and each time, Thomas was vindicated and had the citations dropped.
“Tim faces a real and concrete threat that Defendants will enter and search the curtilage of his home in the future simply because the cabin has frontage on Butler Lake,” the lawsuit reads. “Because Defendants’ have entered and searched the curtilage of Tim’s home without his consent or a warrant, and are empowered by [state law] to do so whenever they wish, Tim feels insecure on his own property even though he is following the law.”
Thomas is being represented in the suit by Kirby Thomas West, an attorney with the Institute for Justice. The public-interest law firm is currently litigating several other cases in multiple states as part of its 4th Amendment Project. A few of these lawsuits deal specifically with state fish-and-game agencies, and they are based on claims that game wardens and fish cops have, at times, violated hunters’ and anglers’ Fourth Amendment rights against unlawful searches and seizures.
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“What we’ve seen in recent years is a disconcerting erosion or lack of respect for Fourth Amendment Rights,” West tells Outdoor Life. “We bring cases to try to bolster [those] rights, and we felt like this [case] fit pretty squarely within that project.”
She explains that Thomas reached out to IJ about representation after seeing some of the firm’s other legal wins under similar circumstances. One of these wins occurred in May, when Tennessee judges reigned in the powers of state game wardens by restricting their ability to enter private property to look for or investigate wildlife crimes without a warrant. That case was filed by two landowners who were also represented by IJ attorneys, and who claimed to have been under surveillance by wildlife officers with the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency.
West says their case in Tennessee — along with others filed by the IJ in Virginia, Louisiana, and Pennsylvania — challenged the “Opens Field Doctrine,” a federal precedent from the Prohibition era that permits law enforcement agents to surveil rural lands. TWRA attorneys argued in the case that because so much hunting takes place on private land in Tennessee, this exception to the constitutional protection against warrantless searches is necessary for the agency to protect the state’s wildlife resources.
“Essentially, the government tries to allege that there’s an exception to the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement on certain kinds of property. And we just think that is totally contrary to the Constitution,” West says. “But in some ways, this case [involving Tim Thomas] is really distinct because we’re talking about an even more blatant disregard for Fourth Amendment rights.”
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West points to a Pennsylvania statute that deals specifically with the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission, and which grants the state’s waterways conservation officers the power to “enter upon any land or water in the performance of their duties.” This is different, she explains, from a separate statute that allows Pennsylvania game wardens to enter upon any land except “curtilage,” which is defined as the property immediately surrounding someone’s home (such as their yard).
West adds that there are a few states that have similar statues, although she was unable to specify which ones. She says that to her knowledge, these states don’t grant the same kind of “unlimited authority” that Pennsylvania does.
“When it comes to waterway conservation officers, this statute doesn’t [enforce] the same limitations that even the state’s game wardens have, so it’s essentially giving them a blank check to go wherever, whenever, to look for some kind of wrong doing,” West says. “But you don’t lose your constitutional rights just because you happen to live near water.”
West says they have not yet heard back from the PFBC, which has 60 days to respond to the complaint.
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