Mike Maharrey of the Tenth Amendment Center discusses a recent U.S. Supreme Court case that overturns a Kansas Supreme Court decision concerning a potentially unconstitutional traffic stop. The police officer in the incident in question pulled a car over because his computer showed that the owner had a suspended driver’s license. This was seen as probable cause, even though it’s obviously quite possible that someone other than the owner was driving the car. The Supreme Court ultimately ruled that the officer’s actions did not violate the Fourth Amendment, overturning the Kansas court’s decision that the stop had been unconstitutional. Maharrey laments the tendency, even among some libertarians, to turn to the federal government as a safeguard of liberty. The pattern, he says, is clear: the more you centralize power, the more it will erode our rights.

Discussed on the show:

“Supreme Court Rules Against Fourth Amendment” (The Libertarian Institute)

Mike Maharrey is National Communications Coordinator for the Tenth Amendment Center. He is the author of three books on nullification and hosts the Thoughts from Maharrey Head podcast. Find him on Twitter @mmaharrey10th.

This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: NoDev NoOps NoIT, by Hussein Badakhchani; The War State, by Mike Swanson; WallStreetWindow.com; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott; Listen and Think Audio; TheBumperSticker.com; and LibertyStickers.com.

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The following is an automatically generated transcript.

Show TranscriptScott Horton 0:10

All right, y'all welcome it's Scott Horton Show. I am the director of the Libertarian Institute editorial director of antiwar.com, author of the book Fool's Errand: Time to End the War in Afghanistan. And I've recorded more than 5000 interviews going back to 2003, all of which are available at ScottHorton.org. You can also sign up to the podcast feed. The full archive is also available at youtube.com/ScottHortonShow. All right, you guys introducing Michael Maharrey. From the 10th amendment center. He is the National communications director there at the 10th amendment center and he also writes for us at the Institute, libertarian institute.org including one on the front page today. Supreme Court rules against Fourth Amendment? Well, I'm not sure you could be referring to a great many different cases there. So we'll have to get into the details. Welcome back to the show, Mike. How you doing?

Mike Maharrey 1:11

Thanks, God. It's always a pleasure to be on the show. It's one of my favorites.

Scott Horton 1:15

Cool, man. Well, happy to have you here. So a Kansas versus Glover film in?

Mike Maharrey 1:24

Yeah. So this was a case from a couple of years back and involves search and seizure. As all these Fourth Amendment cases do, basically, the deputy pulled over a car because the driver came back as having an expired driver's license. So he used that as probable cause and dude ended up getting arrested. And the defense was and I think this is a legitimate defense. Just because the driver of an automobile has a suspended license doesn't mean or just because the Winter has a suspended license. That doesn't mean the person driving has a suspended license. You know, a lot of people drive cars, you know, especially like if you're in a family, my wife drives my car, I drive her car. And so the argument was that the police couldn't really assume that there was a crime being committed, so therefore had no justification in pulling over the driver. And interestingly, the the states started out in state court and the state court agreed and it ended up working itself up through the system eventually got to the US Supreme Court. Now,