Pennsylvania Rejects Federal “Administrative Warrants” and Restores Renters’ Privacy

Rob Peccola is an attorney with the Institute for Justice and was counsel for the plaintiffs in Rivera v. Borough of Pottstown, a state constitutional challenge to administrative warrants in Pennsylvania.

For the first time, a state appellate court has placed renters’ privacy rights — and their property interests in their leaseholds — on the same constitutional footing as those of homeowners.

The Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court held last month in Rivera v. Borough of Pottstown that Article I, Section 8 of the state constitution requires individualized probable cause before government officials may enter an occupied home without the resident’s consent. It might be hard to believe such a ruling is newsworthy — let alone the first of its kind in the country. Yet the court, in a unanimous en banc opinion, reached that conclusion only by declining to follow the U.S. Supreme Court’s longstanding approval of so-called administrative warrants, or warrants issued without any suspicion of wrongdoing. Instead, they are based solely on generalized enforcement criteria, which means nothing more particularized than that a property falls within a scheduled inspection cycle. Essentially: your number is up; let us in.

The decision marks the first time any appellate court has rejected the federal administrative-warrant framework under a state constitution. It also underscores the Pennsylvania Constitution’s aggressive protections for individual liberty — and offers a striking example of a state court’s correction of federal doctrine that has drifted away from safeguarding the individual against government intrusion.

The Federal Backdrop: Diminished Protection for Renters

Since the 1960s, federal search-and-seizure doctrine has drawn a sharp — and deeply consequential — line between criminal investigations and regulatory home inspections. In cases such as 1967’s Camara v. Municipal Court, the U.S. Supreme Court permitted government officials to enter homes for code inspections without individualized suspicion, so long as they obtained an “administrative” warrant based on neutral enforcement plans.

Whatever its original rationale, Camara’s framework has enabled serious privacy abuses. Administrative warrants have become a routine mechanism for compelled entry into private homes — overwhelmingly those of renters — without any evidence that a violation exists. Inspectors document intimate details of tenants’ lives, sometimes sharing observations with law enforcement, blurring the line between regulation and policing. Local governments have not, to my knowledge, ever dared to enforce these wall-to-wall inspection regimes against owner-occupied homes, so the constitutionality of such searches has not been tested. Renters, by contrast, have long been told, often paternalistically, that the Constitution requires less for entry into their homes.

Pennsylvania Chooses a Different Path

Pennsylvania’s constitution contains its own search-and-seizure provision, adopted well before the Fourth Amendment and interpreted independently. Article I, Section 8 speaks in categorical terms about the sanctity of the home and the necessity of particularized justification for government intrusion: “The people shall be secure in their persons, houses, papers and possessions from unreasonable searches and seizures, and no warrant to search any place or to seize any person or things shall issue without describing them as nearly as may be, nor without probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation subscribed to by the affiant.” (Emphasis added.)

In Rivera, the Commonwealth Court took that text seriously. It did not discuss the extensive factual record of privacy invasions that have occurred under these programs. Nor did it engage in ad hoc policy balancing. It simply concluded that Pottstown’s administrative-warrant provision was unconstitutional on its face because any warrants untethered from individualized probable cause are incompatible with Pennsylvania’s constitutional tradition. Routine inspections, standing alone, cannot justify forced entry into an occupied home. Renters (and for that matter, non-owner occupants, also subject to these searches) do not surrender their privacy by not owning their homes.

The opinion is notable for its clarity and logical discipline. Federal precedent, the court explained, does not bind state courts interpreting their own constitutions. Where federal doctrine has relaxed constitutional protections, states remain free — and sometimes obliged — to hold the line.

Why This Case Was Hard to Bring

The substance of Rivera matters. So does the story of how it reached the merits at all.

Challenges to rental inspection regimes face an almost perverse procedural gauntlet. File suit before a warrant issues, and courts dismiss the case as unripe. File after an inspection occurs, and courts declare it moot. This catch-22 has long prevented courts from squarely addressing the constitutionality of administrative inspection warrants.

Even once filed, Rivera encountered years of procedural obstruction, including sharply limited discovery and missing municipal records later recovered only through forensic analysis. It took a 2020 appellate victory reversing discovery orders to simply learn how the inspection program actually operated. These barriers are not incidental. They explain why federal doctrine has persisted largely untested — and why this ruling took nearly a decade to arrive. Courts sometimes assume, incorrectly, that rental inspections constitute a trivial privacy invasion, but the record in this case revealed the truth. These inspections are deeply invasive, revealing, among other things, sexual, religious, political, and medical information about tenants. Worse, this information does not remain secret. Although the court did not explicitly premise its opinion on this factual record, it clearly understood what these “routine inspections” really mean for privacy.

State Constitutions Matter — and Ohio Is Next

The broader significance of Rivera extends beyond Pennsylvania. Rental inspection regimes exist nationwide, often justified by rote citation to federal precedent that state courts have never independently examined. Rivera demonstrates that those citations are not the end of the analysis.

That lesson now stands poised for further development. In early 2026, the Ohio Supreme Court will hear argument in a case raising closely related questions about compelled rental inspections and the scope of protection afforded by Ohio’s constitution. Like Pennsylvania’s, Ohio’s search-and-seizure provision has a distinct textual and historical pedigree—and a long tradition of independent interpretation. The issues before the court will test whether Ohio continues to follow diminished federal standards or, like Pennsylvania, insists that constitutional protections do not depend on whether one owns or rents a home.

For decades, renters have been treated as constitutional afterthoughts. Rivera is a reminder that state constitutions remain powerful sources of liberty — and that when courts take them seriously, long-settled federal assumptions can give way.

Suggested Citation: Rob Peccola, Pennsylvania Rejects Federal “Administrative Warrants” and Restores Renters’ Privacy, Sᴛᴀᴛᴇ Cᴏᴜʀᴛ Rᴇᴘᴏʀᴛ (Jan. 7, 2026), https://statecourtreport.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/pennsylvania-rejects-federal-administrative-warrants-and-restores-renters