Opinion of the Court noncriminal context. Indeed, it acknowledged what is evident from our precedents-that the Amendment's protection applies in the civil context as well. See O'Connor v. Ortega, 480 U. S. 709 (1987); New Jersey v. T. L. O., 469 U. S. 325, 334-335 (1985); Michigan v. Tyler, 436 U. S. 499, 504-506 (1978); Marshall v. Barlow's, Inc., 436 U. S. 307, 312-313 (1978); Camara v. Municipal Court of San Francisco, 387 U. S. 523, 528 (1967).11 Nor did the Court of Appeals suggest that the Fourth Amendment applied exclusively to law enforcement activities. It observed, for example, that the Amendment's protection would be triggered "by a search or other entry into the home incident to an eviction or repossession," 942 F. 2d, at 1077.12 Instead, the court sought to explain why the Fourth Amendment protects against seizures of property in the plain-view context, but not in this case, as follows: "[S]eizures made in the course of investigations by police or other law enforcement officers are almost always, as in the plain view cases, the culmination of searches. The police search in order to seize, and it is the search 11 It is true that Murray's Lessee v. Hoboken Land & Improvement Co., 18 How. 272 (1856), cast some doubt on the applicability of the Amendment to noncriminal encounters such as this. Id., at 285. But cases since that time have shed a different light, making clear that Fourth Amendment guarantees are triggered by governmental searches and seizures "without regard to the use to which [houses, papers, and effects] are applied." Warden, Maryland Penitentiary v. Hayden, 387 U. S. 294, 301 (1967). Murray's Lessee's broad statement that the Fourth Amendment "has no reference to civil proceedings for the recovery of debt" arguably only meant that the warrant requirement did not apply, as was suggested in G. M. Leasing Corp. v. United States, 429 U. S. 338, 352 (1977). Whatever its proper reading, we reaffirm today our basic understanding that the protection against unreasonable searches and seizures fully applies in the civil context. 12 This was the view expressed by the Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit in Specht v. Jensen, 832 F. 2d 1516 (1987), remanded on unrelated grounds, 853 F. 2d 805 (1988) (en banc), with which the Seventh Circuit expressly agreed. 942 F. 2d, at 1076. Opinion of the Court and ensuing seizure that the Fourth Amendment by its reference to 'searches and seizures' seeks to regulate. Seizure means one thing when it is the outcome of a search; it may mean something else when it stands apart from a search or any other investigative activity. The Fourth Amendment may still nominally apply, but, precisely because there is no invasion of privacy, the usual rules do not apply." Id., at 1079 (emphasis in original). We have difficulty with this passage. The court seemingly construes the Amendment to protect only against seizures that are the outcome of a search. But our cases are to the contrary and hold that seizures of property are subject to Fourth Amendment scrutiny even though no search within the meaning of the Amendment has taken place. See, e. g., Jacobsen, 466 U. S., at 120-125; Place, 462 U. S., at 706-707; Cardwell, 417 U. S., at 588-589.13 More generally, an officer who happens to come across an individual's property in a public area could seize it only if Fourth Amendment standards are satisfied-for example, if the items are evidence of a crime or contraband. Cf. Payton v. New York, 13 The officers in these cases were engaged in law enforcement and were looking for something that was found and seized. In this broad sense the seizures were the result of "searches," but not in the Fourth Amendment That the Court of Appeals might have been suggesting that the plain-view cases are explainable because they almost always occur in the course of law enforcement activities receives some support from the penultimate sentence of the quoted passage, where the court states that the word "seizure" might lose its usual meaning "when it stands apart from a search or any other investigative activity." Id., at 1079 (emphasis added). And, in the following paragraph, it observes that "[o]utside of the law enforcement area the Fourth Amendment retains its force as a protection against searches, because they invade privacy. That is why we decline to confine the amendment to the law enforcement setting." Id., at 1079-1080. Even if the court meant that seizures of property in the course of law enforcement activities, whether civil or criminal, implicate interests safeguarded by the Fourth Amendment, but that pure property interests are unprotected in the non-law-enforcement setting, we are not in accord, as indicated in the body of this opinion. Opinion of the Court 445 U. S., at 587. We are also puzzled by the last sentence of the excerpt, where the court announces that the "usual rules" of the Fourth Amendment are inapplicable if the seizure is not the result of a search or any other investigative activity "precisely because there is no invasion of privacy." For the plain-view cases clearly state that, notwithstanding the absence of any interference with privacy, seizures of effects that are not authorized by a warrant are reasonable only because there is probable cause to associate the property with criminal activity. The seizure of the weapons in Horton, for example, occurred in the midst of a search, yet we emphasized that it did not "involve any invasion of privacy." 496 U. S., at 133. In short, our statement that such seizures must satisfy the Fourth Amendment and will be deemed reasonable only if the item's incriminating character is "immediately apparent," id., at 136-137, is at odds with the Court of Appeals' approach. The Court of Appeals' effort is both interesting and creative, but at bottom it simply reasserts the earlier thesis that the Fourth Amendment protects privacy but not property. We remain unconvinced and see no justification for departing from our prior cases. In our view, the reason why an officer might enter a house or effectuate a seizure is wholly irrelevant to the threshold question whether the Amendment applies. What matters is the intrusion on the people's security from governmental interference. Therefore, the right against unreasonable seizures would be no less transgressed if the seizure of the house was undertaken to collect evidence, verify compliance with a housing regulation, effect an eviction by the police, or on a whim, for no reason at all. As we have observed on more than one occasion, it would be "anomalous to say that the individual and his private property are fully protected by the Fourth Amendment only when the individual is suspected of criminal behavior." Camara, 387 U. S., at 530; see also O'Connor, 480 U. S., at 715; T. L. O., 469 U. S., at 335. Opinion of the Court The Court of Appeals also stated that even if, contrary to its previous rulings, "there is some element or tincture of a Fourth Amendment seizure, it cannot carry the day for the Soldals." 942 F. 2d, at 1080. Relying on our decision in Graham v. Connor, 490 U. S. 386 (1989), the court reasoned that it should look at the "dominant character of the conduct challenged in a section 1983 case [to] determine the constitutional standard under which it is evaluated." 942 F. 2d, at 1080. Believing that the Soldals' claim was more akin to a challenge against the deprivation of property without due process of law than against an unreasonable seizure, the court concluded that they should not be allowed to bring their suit under the guise of the Fourth Amendment. But we see no basis for doling out constitutional protections in such fashion. Certain wrongs affect more than a single right and, accordingly, can implicate more than one of the Constitution's commands. Where such multiple violations are alleged, we are not in the habit of identifying as a preliminary matter the claim's "dominant" character. Rather, we examine each constitutional provision in turn. See, e. g., Hudson v. Palmer, 468 U. S. 517 (1984) (Fourth Amendment and Fourteenth Amendment Due Process Clause); Ingraham v. Wright, 430 U. S. 651 (1977) (Eighth Amendment and Fourteenth Amendment Due Process Clause). Graham is not to the contrary. Its holding was that claims of excessive use of force should be analyzed under the Fourth Amendment's reasonableness standard, rather than the Fourteenth Amendment's substantive due process test. We were guided by the fact that, in that case, both provisions targeted the same sort of governmental conduct and, as a result, we chose the more "explicit textual source of constitutional protection" over the "more generalized notion of 'substantive due process."" 490 U. S., at 394– 395. Surely, Graham does not bar resort in this case to the Fourth Amendment's specific protection for "houses, papers, Opinion of the Court and effects" rather than the general protection of property in the Due Process Clause. III Respondents are fearful, as was the Court of Appeals, that applying the Fourth Amendment in this context inevitably will carry it into territory unknown and unforeseen: routine repossessions, negligent actions of public employees that interfere with individuals' right to enjoy their homes, and the like, thereby federalizing areas of law traditionally the concern of the States. For several reasons, we think the risk is exaggerated. To begin, our decision will have no impact on activities such as repossessions or attachments if they involve entry into the home, intrusion on individuals' privacy, or interference with their liberty, because they would implicate the Fourth Amendment even on the Court of Appeals' own terms. This was true of the Tenth Circuit's decision in Specht with which, as we previously noted, the Court of Appeals expressed agreement. More significantly, "reasonableness is still the ultimate standard" under the Fourth Amendment, Camara, supra, at 539, which means that numerous seizures of this type will survive constitutional scrutiny. As is true in other circumstances, the reasonableness determination will reflect a "careful balancing of governmental and private interests." T. L. O., supra, at 341. Assuming, for example, that the officers were acting pursuant to a court order, as in Specht v. Jensen, 832 F. 2d 1516 (CA10 1987), or Fuentes v. Shevin, 407 U. S. 67 (1972), and as often would be the case, a showing of unreasonableness on these facts would be a laborious task indeed. Cf. Simms v. Slacum, 3 Cranch 300, 301 (1806). Hence, while there is no guarantee against the filing of frivolous suits, had the ejection in this case properly awaited the state court's judgment it is quite unlikely that the federal court would have been bothered with a § 1983 action alleging a Fourth Amendment violation. |