Sobriety Checkpoints Are Upheld : Supreme Court: Justices rule that public safety prevails over a motorist’s right to privacy. The decision is the latest in a series favoring law enforcement officials.

The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that police may set up roadblocks on highways and routinely stop motorists to see if they are sober.

In balancing a state’s interest in catching drunk drivers against a motorist’s right to privacy, the high court said that public safety clearly should prevail.

Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist said that a 30-second stop at a police checkpoint is a small price to pay for combatting the carnage caused by drunk drivers. In 1988, more than 23,000 Americans were killed and about 500,000 were seriously injured in auto accidents in which alcohol played a role, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation.

The ruling, hailed by opponents of drunk driving but criticized by civil libertarians, extends a series of decisions in which the Supreme Court has held in favor of law enforcement officials in search and seizure cases.

Since 1984, the California Highway Patrol has used sobriety checkpoints, but officials say that they are more useful for deterring drunk driving than actually catching impaired motorists. Last year, only 591 of nearly 52,000 vehicles stopped at checkpoints--about 1% of the total--resulted in arrests for drunk driving, said Steve Kohler, a patrol spokesman in Sacramento.

Still, the state courts were split on whether it was constitutional for the police to stop hundreds of sober motorists in hopes of finding an occasional drunk driver. Courts in 19 states, including California, had upheld the practice. But courts in 12 other states, including Michigan, had ruled that the checkpoints violated the Fourth Amendment’s ban on “unreasonable searches and seizures.”

The Michigan courts concluded that the checkpoints were unreasonable because they rarely resulted in drunk-driving arrests.

Rehnquist, writing for a 6-3 majority, quickly dismissed that argument. It is up to the police, not the courts, to decide whether the checkpoints are effective, he said. “For the purposes of Fourth Amendment analysis, the choice among reasonable alternatives remains with the government officials who have a unique understanding of, and a responsibility for, limited public resources,” he wrote in reversing the Michigan court.

In Orange County, the California Highway Patrol said 23 people had been arrested at the three sobriety checkpoints set up since the first of the year. A spokesman said some 1,700 motorists were stopped.

Other local police officials hailed the ruling.

“It’s a tremendous boost that will allow us to be more proactive,” said Santa Ana Police Chief Paul Walters. “Anything that will help us to get the drunk driver off the road we will support. You can prevent many injury accidents if you stop the drinking driver before he injures innocent people.”

Santa Ana police do not hold sobriety checkpoints but Walters said the Supreme Court’s decision may cause them to reconsider their policy.

“The real benefit of sobriety checkpoint is education--making people aware of the dangers of drinking and driving,” he said.

Mothers Against Drunk Driving hailed the ruling as a “great victory” and urged officials in every community in the nation to set up sobriety checkpoints as “a key element in an all-out campaign to finally rid our roads of the menace posed by drinking drivers.”

However, civil libertarians denounced the court for allowing the police to stop a motorist even though they have no reason to believe he is violating the law.

“It is alarming that Rehnquist completely defers to police. It’s the court’s job to decide whether a particular police practice is constitutional,” said Loren Siegel, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, which challenged the Michigan checkpoint law.

Nevertheless, the ruling came as no surprise. Since Rehnquist took over as chief justice in 1986, the high court has routinely ruled for the police in search and seizure cases, particularly when drugs are involved. Last year, for example, the court upheld mandatory drug tests for workers whose jobs involve safety or sensitive information and declared that airport police officers may stop and question travelers who look like drug couriers. Earlier this year, the court said U.S. agents may search for and seize evidence outside of U.S borders without answering to the federal courts.

“I can’t tell you the last time we won a Fourth Amendment case” in the Supreme Court, the ACLU’s Siegel said.

Under the Fourth Amendment, police officers are not permitted to search a home unless they have “probable cause” to believe a crime has been committed. In 1968, the court said that policemen may briefly stop and question someone on the streets if they have at least a reasonable suspicion that he is engaged in wrongdoing.

In other action, the court upheld a determination by the Bush Administration that Social Security payments do not constitute “child support,” a policy that saves the government $44 million a year.