State Supreme Court Stands Firm on Private Property Rights, Rejects Warrantless Searches of Private Land

July 21, 2026

HARRISBURG - Great news for Pennsylvania sportsmen, homeowners and landowners, after lengthy deliberation, the state Supreme Court today joined a growing number of other states in recognizing our Commonwealth's constitutional protections for Pennsylvanians against the federal "open fields doctrine" loophole which law enforcement has abused for decades to negate private property rights.

I raised this issue last year in my column "Pennsylvania Has Trashed Our Fourth Amendment Protections." In addition to the Pennsylvania Game Commission (PGC) relentlessly attacking a private hunting club, a constituent a while back contacted me to report what he believed was illegal and improper behavior by Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission (PFBC). Claiming the resident had violated fishing regulations on his own pond. The officer loudly intruded and stomped past his cancer-ridden wife who was bathing.
When I contacted the PFBC, I was told "we regulate every single body of water in the Commonwealth" and "there are two sides to every story."

Well, there certainly is now.

What the Pennsylvania Supreme Court did today was reject this ludicrous loophole - the ability of law enforcement to conduct warrantless searches of privately owned property - created out of thin air by the United States Supreme Court decades ago:

"… open fields do not provide the setting for those intimate activities that the Amendment is intended to shelter from government interference or surveillance. There is no societal interest in protecting the privacy of those activities, such as the cultivation of crops, that occur in open fields."

Pennsylvania's Supreme Court today unanimously affirmed that Article 1, Section 8 of our constitution, which states, in part: "The people shall be secure in their persons, houses, papers and possessions from unreasonable searches and seizures," applies to "open fields of any landowner that has demonstrated a reasonable expectation of privacy by taking sufficient steps to exclude intruders therefrom" and as such, government officials "must obtain a warrant based upon probable cause or satisfy one of the recognized exceptions to the warrant requirement before entering such property."

And while the Court as a whole did not address how Article 1, Section 8 applies specifically to open fields on which lesser steps have been taken to exclude intruders, Justices Wecht and McCaffery asserted that Pennsylvania's constitution further protects landowners' expectation "that their land is protected against arbitrary and warrantless government entries" whether or not they post warnings against trespassing.

That is why, as a lifelong sportsman and property owner I am very pleased with today's ruling putting Pennsylvania private property protection on par with the seven states that have outright rejected the federal open fields doctrine under their own constitutions - Mississippi, Montana, New York, Oregon, Tennessee, Vermont, and Washington - because their state constitutions provide greater protection than an invented federal loophole.

What we must watch for now are the governor, the state Senate and House joining forces with the PFBC and PGC to somehow water down this landmark ruling to allow their continued unconstitutional behavior.

"Unconstitutional" means "against the law," and therefore illegal. Private property rights and not paying taxes are literally what this nation was founded on.

Representative David Maloney
130th District
Pennsylvania House of Representatives