No. 95-1268
Argued: December 11, 1996Decided: February 19, 1997
Held: An officer making a traffic stop may order passengers to get out of the car pending completion of the stop. Statements by the Court in Michigan v. Long, 463 U.S. 1032, 1047 -1048 (Mimms “held that police may order persons out of an automobile during a [traffic] stop” (emphasis added)), and by Justice Powell in Rakas v. Illinois, 439 U.S. 128, 155 , n. 4 (Mimms held “that passengers . . . have no Fourth Amendment right not to be ordered from their vehicle, once a proper stop is made” (emphasis added)), do not constitute binding precedent, since the former statement was dictum, and the latter was contained in a concurrence. Nevertheless, the Mimms rule applies to passengers as well as to drivers. The Court therein explained that the touchstone of Fourth Amendment analysis is the reasonableness of the particular governmental invasion of a citizen’s personal security, 434 U.S., at 108 -109, and that reasonableness depends on a balance between the public interest and the individual’s right to personal security free from arbitrary interference by officers, id., at 109. On the public interestside, the same weighty interest in officer safety is present regardless of whether the occupant of the stopped car is a driver, as in Mimms, see id., at 109-110, or a passenger, as here. Indeed, the danger to an officer from a traffic stop is likely to be greater when there are passengers in addition to the driver in the stopped car. On the personal liberty side, the case for passengers is stronger than that for the driver in the sense that there is probable cause to believe that the driver has committed a minor vehicular offense, see id., at 110, but there is no such reason to stop or detain passengers. But as a practical matter, passengers are already stopped by virtue of the stop of the vehicle, so that the additional intrusion upon them is minimal. Pp. 2-6.
106 Md. App. 24, 664 A. 2d 1, reversed and remanded.
Rehnquist, C. J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which O’Connor, Scalia, Souter, Thomas, Ginsburg, and Breyer, JJ., joined. Stevens, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Kennedy, J., joined. Kennedy, J., filed a dissenting opinion.
