Yes to checkpoints

Oregon is a maverick among states, and in some respects we’re proud of our state’s independent streak.

We hardly ever walk out of a store feeling sad that we didn’t have to pay sales tax, for instance.

But we don’t boast about Oregon’s membership in the club of 12 states where police can’t legally set up roadblocks to look for drunken drivers.

Oregon’s Legislature, which is meeting in Salem, has recently been discussing these so-called “sobriety checkpoints.”

Such operations, once used in Oregon, including Baker County, have been illegal in the state since 1987.

That’s the year the Oregon Supreme Court ruled that checkpoints violated the state Constitution. The state court cited the issue of unreasonable searches and seizures, a topic on which Oregon’s Constitution is identical to the U.S. Constitution’s Fourth Amendment, which reads:

“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

In 1990 the U.S. Supreme Court, in a 6-3 decision on a case from Michigan, ruled that sobriety checkpoints, though a minor infringement on citizens, are not, as the Fourth Amendment puts it, “unreasonable” searches or seizures.

We think the U.S. Supreme Court’s interpretation is more reasonable than the Oregon court’s.

Unlike, say, voting, driving a car is a privilege, not a constitutionally protected right.

That’s why you can register to vote by filling out a free form, but if you want a driver’s license you have to pass two tests and pay a fee every eight years.

Critics of sobriety checkpoints often cite the Fourth Amendment’s insistence on “probable cause” for searches and seizures.

Sadly, there’s an abundance of probable cause showing that people drive while drunk, and that they kill themselves, and thousands of innocent people, as a result.

In 2007, about 37 percent of the fatal crashes in the United States involved at least one driver who had been drinking.

Opponents also contend that checkpoints constitute an invasion of drivers’ privacy.

We don’t believe that’s the case so long as police working checkpoints stay within a narrow set of guidelines.

For instance, we would agree that sobriety checks violate the Fourth Amendment if officers rummaged through the backseat and trunk of every car they stopped.

But that’s not what happens during checkpoints. Officers look at the driver and, if there’s any evidence of intoxication — the odor of alcohol, for instance — the officer might require the driver take a field sobriety test.

Ultimately, we doubt anyone, including people who rail against sobriety checkpoints, would disagree with the notion that the government’s most sacred duty is to protect its citizens.

And although governments sometimes abuse that obligation, we don’t believe that operations which help police find drivers who are a proven and significant threat qualifies as such an abuse.

Nor are were worried that the Supreme Court’s endorsement of sobriety checkpoints is the precedent that entices government officials to try much more onerous schemes.

We’ve seen no such evidence, even though the High Court’s decision is nearly two decades old, and 38 of the 50 states recognize it.

Chief Justice William Rehnquist seems to have considered just such a concern when he wrote the majority opinion in the 1990 Michigan case.

Rehnquist noted that the Supreme Court was not willing to grant police much latitude at all in stopping vehicles. He cited a case in which the Supreme Court ruled as unconstitutional Delaware’s practice of setting up checkpoints to stop cars to find drivers who didn’t have a valid license.

The Court was right in that case because, in contrast to drunken driving, there’s no mountain of statistical evidence showing that drivers who lack a license are prone to killing themselves and others.

The bottom line is that even though checkpoints rank as a minor infringement on Americans, police must have an overwhelmingly compelling reason to inflict such restrictions on citizens.

Getting drunk drivers off the road is compelling enough for us.

We hope Oregon’s legislators, and its voters, agree.