The community caretaker exception allows for a warrantless search to protect public safety, to assist people in distress and to combat perils that are existing or anticipated. The concept first obtained constitutional approval by the United States Supreme Court in the case of Cady v. Dombrowski.  There the Court approved a warrantless search of a motor vehicle to located a missing gun.  In 2009 the New Jersey Supreme Court extended the doctrine so as to allow a warrantless search of a home in order to facilitate an investigation relating to a sexual assault.

Last month, the Third U.S. Circuit of Appeals rendered a decision that seems to limit the community caretaking doctrine to only automobile searches.  In that case law enforcement agents entered a home of an individual without a warrant because of an estranged mother’s concern of the whereabouts of her five year daughter. The police officer found the father in bed and the child secured.
The father later sued under the Federal Civil Rights Act. The core of the case related to whether the warrantless entry into the father’s home could be sustained under any of the exceptions to the warrant requirement contained in the Fourth Amendment. To justify its conduct, the government pointed to the community caretaker doctrine. The court rejected the doctrine and observed that in the Cady case the Supreme Court’s expressly distinguished automobile searches from the search of a home.   Notably, the Court affirmed the dismissal of the plaintiff’s complaint and observed that there was a split in the circuits as to the applicability of the community caretaking doctrine to a warrantless search of a home.