Florida v. J. L. (2000)

In Florida v. J. L., 529 U.S. 266 (2000), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that without more information, an anonymous tip that an individual was carrying a gun was insufficient to justify a stop and frisk.

The case began when police received an anonymous tip that a young black male, wearing a plaid shirt, who would be standing at a particular bus stop, would have a gun on his person. Police followed up on the tip and frisked J. L., a fifteen-year-old youth who matched the description in the tip and found a gun on him. J. L. was charged with carrying a concealed gun without a license and possessing a firearm while being under eighteen years of age. J. L. successfully sought to suppress the gun at his trial, and the state appealed. An intermediate court of appeals overruled the trial court, but the Florida Supreme Court then overruled the intermediate court and reinstated the trial court's ruling. The state high court found that the tip that initiated the police action lacked any indicia of reliability, and therefore the police had violated the Fourth Amendment. Florida then sought and was granted certiorari by the U.S. Supreme Court.

In a unanimous opinion, the Court upheld the decision of the Florida Supreme Court. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote the majority opinion. The opinion noted that under Terry v. Ohio (1968), which allowed protective frisks based on reasonable suspicion in order to protect police safety, police could subject suspects to a frisk of their persons to determine if they might be armed. Such frisks, however, were allowed only when the officer had articulable reasons for suspecting that the person was indeed armed and dangerous. In this case, the officer had not personally observed any behavior that would make a reasonable person suspect that J. L. was armed. Instead, the only basis for the officer's suspicion was that an anonymous tip provided a description that J. L. happened to fit. The officer lacked any independent means by which to judge whether the person described was armed and presented a danger. The Court noted that the standard to justify a Terry stop was not that a person had been accurately described, but that there was a reasonable suspicion to believe that a person was involved in illegal behavior. The Court also rejected an argument made by Florida and the United States, as amici, to modify Terry to allow frisks of individuals whenever a tip alleged that a person was armed.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, joined by Chief Justice William Rehnquist, concurred. Kennedy stated that police had no basis for conducting the frisk. He wanted to make it clear, however, that different facts might warrant a different result. He believed that if an anonymous tip provided information that allowed police to determine its reliability, such as predicting future conduct by the subject that could then be verified by police, there might be sufficient suspicion to justify a frisk.