United States v. Johnson – Apartment Renters Out of 4th Amendment Luck

In courts throughout the nation, Fourth Amendment search and seizure cases are a battlefield with vast potential consequences for Americans across all walks of life. One subject area with a particularly wide potential range of impact is the curtilage doctrine as applied to individual units within multi-unit apartment buildings. The opaque Supreme Court precedent on the issue hangs over the heads of the 61.5% of American renters that lived in buildings with two or more units as of 2021. On August 5, 2025, the Fourth Circuit ruled in United States v. Johnson, holding that the area outside of this defendant’s apartment door is not curtilage and therefore may be subject to warrantless search. Despite a contrary claim in the court’s written opinion, the sweeping nature of the holding may bar apartment renters in multi-unit buildings from receiving this protection. 

The Modern Curtilage Doctrine 

Common law has long held that curtilage is an area distinct from any surrounding “open fields” area when confirming the 4th Amendment rights of the resident. Modern Fourth Amendment curtilage doctrine was born out of Oliver v. United States, wherein the Supreme Court distinguished between the immediate area surrounding a home known as the home’s curtilage and any further private property surrounding the home, which is an open field. 

The court held that curtilage “warrants the 4th Amendment protections that attach to the home,” while an open field does not. Homes are highly protected under the Fourth Amendment, as the state is presumed to need a warrant to conduct any form of search or seizure on a home rather than just probable cause.  

Oliver focused on a large piece of land with one home on it. In Dunn v. United States, the Supreme Court established a list of non-exclusive factors for determining where curtilage begins and ends across varied circumstances. These factors are (1) the area’s proximity to the home, (2) whether the area is within an enclosure that also encloses the home, (3) if the area is often used for private or personal acts, and (4) what steps the home’s resident(s) took to stop the area from being easily observed.  

No Property Interest For Apartments 

In United States v. Johnson, Eric Tyrell Johnson resided in an apartment in a building with numerous other units. His dwelling was “in a long hallway . . . near the elevators” of the building, on the second floor. The doorway to his apartment was set about three and a half feet back from the common hallway.  

Without a warrant, police utilized a trained drug-sniffing dog on the front door, and the dog “alerted” to the presence of drugs behind it. Relying in part on the dog’s alert, the police obtained a warrant and went on to search the apartment. The search uncovered drugs and items indicative of drug distribution.  

At trial, Johnson’s motion to suppress the evidence found in his apartment was denied. After he was found guilty, Johnson appealed. In considering his appeal, the Fourth Circuit spent most of its time analyzing Johnson’s argument that the area the dog sniffed was curtilage.¹  

The court held that while the first Dunn factor of proximity to the home would be strongly in the defendant’s favor if the situation reached the Dunn test, he had no “property-based interest” in the area directly outside of his front door. The Fourth Circuit stated that even the area set back from the rest of the apartment building still qualified as part of the hallway, which was the “apartment complex’s common property.”  

The court makes no note that the apartment was “recessed from the common hallway by approximately three and a half feet” (emphasis added) after briefly mentioning it when describing the facts of the case. To them, this recession made no difference, and the door itself is what “marked the boundary” between where Johnson had a property interest and where he had none. Under this line of reasoning, the apartment had no surrounding ground that could possibly be curtilage. As such, the court did not even reach a Dunn factor analysis. 

Conclusions And The Future 

The Johnson opinion notes that multi-unit apartment buildings could, in theory, contain curtilage. But the court had to turn to an out of circuit case, United States v. Hopkins from the Eighth Circuit, to find an opinion providing curtilage protections in these conditions. Hopkins was another case regarding a dog sniffing directly outside of the front door of an apartment. The court used this case despite the Hopkins facts appearing worse for that defendant than the facts in Johnson.  

In Hopkins, the front door in question opened directly to the outdoors and was separated by just one foot from another door. Leading to this pair of doors was a foot pathway² a few steps from a sidewalk and street. The Hopkins apartment building’s units also each face an outdoor common area, which is theoretically easier to access by strangers than the indoor hallway on the second floor of the apartment building in question in Johnson.  

The Hopkins defendant was also a renter, much like Johnson. And yet, the Hopkins court reached the Dunn factors, implying that this renter did have a property interest in the area outside of his door. The Eighth Circuit’s Dunn analysis found that the proximity of the space to the home and its frequent private use outweighed the lack of an enclosure and the lack of protection from view from passersby, making the area curtilage. 

Had the court truly applied the logic of the Hopkins court in Johnson, it would likely have ruled differently. The Fourth Circuit cites another Eighth Circuit case, United States v. Brooks, in stating that the Johnson decision joins a “consensus” regarding common areas of an apartment building. But the common area in Brooks was an internal staircase, an area that is more universally understood as common property compared to the area directly outside of an apartment door. 

In reality, if it is persuasive to other Fourth Circuit judges, Johnson will foreclose apartment building residents in the circuit from receiving curtilage protections. In the Fourth Circuit, your rights regarding searches of your home likely depend in part on what kind of home you live in. 

Max Greenhalgh 

Class of 2027, Staff Member