CA6: Two officers with separate PC can use one warrant

When two officers have separate probable cause to search, they don’t need separate search warrants, as long as the description covers their purpose. At least qualified immunity applies here. Fitzpatrick v. Hanney, 2025 U.S. App. LEXIS 13214 (6th Cir. May 30, 2025):

This court has never held that the Fourth Amendment categorically prohibits joint searches between two government officials when both officials rely on the same search warrant. To the contrary, in United States v. Garcia, we summarized decades of precedent and concluded that the Fourth Amendment allows such searches unless (1) the second official “had probable cause to obtain a separate warrant,” (2) the second official “had an opportunity but failed to obtain a separate warrant,” and (3) the second official “was searching for items different from those authorized” by the first official’s warrant. 496 F.3d 495, 509 (6th Cir. 2007). These three conditions are in the conjunctive.

And Garcia remains the rule today. Indeed, several years ago, this court reaffirmed Garcia and held that federal law enforcement officers in Michigan could rely on a search warrant issued to state law enforcement officers in Texas “so long as they [were] searching for the same evidence as the state officers and the same evidence authorized by the state warrant.” United States v. Castro, 881 F.3d 961, 967 (6th Cir. 2018).

To be sure, this court has not yet decided whether the Fourth Amendment allows government officials such as Simon to search a home using a warrant obtained by a different official when both officials are looking for the same conditions, as opposed to items or evidence. But given the decisions that we do have, we conclude that Simon is entitled to qualified immunity on Fitzpatrick’s Fourth Amendment claims because it was not clearly established then (or now) that Simon was “searching for items different from those authorized” by Officer Hanney’s warrant. Garcia, 496 F.3d at 509. In other words, we cannot say that “every reasonable official” who reads Garcia and Castro would understand those decisions to mean that the Fourth Amendment allows two government officials to search a home for the same items or evidence but does not also allow them to search a home for the same conditions. Wesby, 583 U.S. at 63.