Encino Motorcars, LLC v. Navarro

OCTOBER TERM, 2015

211

Syllabus

ENCINO MOTORCARS, LLC v. NAVARRO et al.

certiorari to the united states court of appeals for the ninth circuit

No. 15–415. Argued April 20, 2016—Decided June 20, 2016

The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) requires employers to pay over- time compensation to covered employees who work more than 40 hours in a given week. In 1966, Congress enacted an exemption from the overtime compensation requirement for “any salesman, partsman, or mechanic primarily engaged in selling or servicing automobiles” at a covered dealership. Fair Labor Standards Amendments of 1966, § 209, 80 Stat. 836, codifed as amended at 29 U. S. C. § 213(b)(10)(A). Con- gress authorized the Department of Labor to promulgate necessary rules, regulations, or orders with respect to this new provision. The Department exercised that authority in 1970 and issued a regulation that defned “salesman” to mean “an employee who is employed for the purpose of and is primarily engaged in making sales or obtaining orders or contracts for sale of the vehicles . . . which the establishment is pri- marily engaged in selling.” 29 CFR § 779.372(c)(1) (1971). The regula- tion excluded service advisors, who sell repair and maintenance services but not vehicles, from the exemption. Several courts, however, re- jected the Department's conclusion that service advisors are not covered by the statutory exemption. In 1978, the Department issued an opinion letter departing from its previous position and stating that service advi- sors could be exempt under 29 U. S. C. § 213(b)(10)(A). In 1987, the Department confrmed its new interpretation by amending its Field Op- erations Handbook to clarify that service advisors should be treated as exempt under the statute. In 2011, however, the Department issued a fnal rule that followed the original 1970 regulation and interpreted the statutory term “salesman” to mean only an employee who sells vehicles. 76 Fed. Reg. 18859. The Department gave little explanation for its de- cision to abandon its decades-old practice of treating service advisors as exempt under § 213(b)(10)(A).

Petitioner is an automobile dealership. Respondents are or were em- ployed by petitioner as service advisors. Respondents fled suit alleg- ing that petitioner violated the FLSA by failing to pay them overtime compensation when they worked more than 40 hours in a week. Peti- tioner moved to dismiss, arguing that the FLSA overtime provisions do not apply to respondents because service advisors are covered by the § 213(b)(10)(A) exemption. The District Court granted the motion, but

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the Ninth Circuit reversed in relevant part. Deferring under Chevron U. S. A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 467 U. S. 837, to the interpretation set forth in the 2011 regulation, the court held that service advisors are not covered by the § 213(b)(10)(A) exemption.

Held: Section 213(b)(10)(A) must be construed without placing controlling

weight on the Department's 2011 regulation. Pp. 219–224.

(a) When an agency is authorized by Congress to issue regulations and promulgates a regulation interpreting a statute it enforces, the in- terpretation receives deference if the statute is ambiguous and the agency's interpretation is reasonable. See Chevron, supra, at 842–844. When Congress authorizes an agency to proceed through notice-and- comment rulemaking, that procedure is a “very good indicator” that Congress intended the regulation to carry the force of law, so Chevron should apply. United States v. Mead Corp., 533 U. S. 218, 229–230. But Chevron deference is not warranted where the regulation is “proce- durally defective”—that is, where the agency errs by failing to follow the correct procedures in issuing the regulation. 533 U. S., at 227.

One basic procedural requirement of administrative rulemaking is that an agency must give adequate reasons for its decisions. Where the agency has failed to provide even a minimal level of analysis, its action is arbitrary and capricious and so cannot carry the force of law. Agencies are free to change their existing policies, but in explaining its changed position, an agency must be cognizant that longstanding poli- cies may have “engendered serious reliance interests that must be taken into account.” FCC v. Fox Television Stations, Inc., 556 U. S. 502, 515. An “[u]nexplained inconsistency” in agency policy is “a reason for hold- ing an interpretation to be an arbitrary and capricious change from agency practice,” National Cable & Telecommunications Assn. v. Brand X Internet Services, 545 U. S. 967, 981, and an arbitrary and capricious regulation of this sort receives no Chevron deference. Pp. 219–222.

(b) Applying those principles, the 2011 regulation was issued without the reasoned explanation that was required in light of the Department's change in position and the signifcant reliance interests involved. The industry had relied since 1978 on the Department's position that service advisors are exempt from the FLSA's overtime pay requirements, and had negotiated and structured compensation plans against this back- ground understanding. In light of this background, the Department needed a more reasoned explanation for its decision to depart from its existing enforcement policy. The Department instead said almost noth- ing. It did not analyze or explain why the statute should be interpreted

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to exempt dealership employees who sell vehicles but not dealership employees who sell services. This lack of reasoned explication for a regulation that is inconsistent with the Department's longstanding ear- lier position results in a rule that cannot carry the force of law, and so the regulation does not receive Chevron deference. It is appropriate to remand for the Ninth Circuit to interpret § 213(b)(10)(A) in the frst instance. Pp. 222–224.

780 F. 3d 1267, vacated and remanded.

Kennedy, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Roberts, C. J., and Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan, JJ., joined. Ginsburg, J., fled a concurring opinion, in which Sotomayor, J., joined, post, p. 225. Thomas, J., fled a dissenting opinion, in which Alito, J., joined, post, p. 227.

Paul D. Clement argued the cause for petitioner. With him on the briefs were Jeffrey M. Harris, Karl R. Lindegren, Todd B. Scherwin, Colin P. Calvert, and Wendy McGuire Coats.

Stephanos Bibas argued the cause for respondents. With him on the brief were James A. Feldman and Nancy Bregstein Gordon.

Anthony A. Yang argued the cause for the United States as amicus curiae urging affrmance. With him on the brief were Solicitor General Verrilli, Deputy Solicitor General Kneedler, and M. Patricia Smith.*

*Briefs of amici curiae urging reversal were fled for the Chamber of Commerce of the United States of America et al. by Matthew W. Lampe, E. Michael Rossman, Kate Comerford Todd, Warren D. Post- man, Deborah White, and Ryan J. Watson; and for the National Auto- mobile Dealers Association et al. by Felicia R. Reid and Douglas I. Greenhaus.

Briefs of amici curiae urging affrmance were fled for the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, AFL–CIO, by David A. Rosenfeld and Mark D. Schneider; for Law Professors by David C. Frederick, Michael F. Sturley, Lynn E. Blais, and Erin Glenn Busby; and for the National Employment Lawyers Association et al. by Terisa E. Chaw and Catherine K. Ruckelshaus.

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Opinion of the Court

Justice Kennedy delivered the opinion of the Court. This case addresses whether a federal statute requires payment of increased compensation to certain automobile dealership employees for overtime work. The federal stat- ute in question is the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), 29 U. S. C. § 201 et seq., enacted in 1938 to “protect all covered workers from substandard wages and oppressive working hours.” Barrentine v. Arkansas-Best Freight System, Inc., 450 U. S. 728, 739 (1981). Among its other provisions, the FLSA requires employers to pay overtime compensation to covered employees who work more than 40 hours in a given week. The rate of overtime pay must be “not less than one and one-half times the regular rate” of the employee's pay. § 207(a).

Five current and former service advisors brought this suit alleging that the automobile dealership where they were em- ployed was required by the FLSA to pay them overtime wages. The dealership contends that the position and du- ties of a service advisor bring these employees within § 213(b)(10)(A), which establishes an exemption from the FLSA overtime provisions for certain employees engaged in selling or servicing automobiles. The case turns on the interpretation of this exemption.

I

A

Automobile dealerships in many communities not only sell vehicles but also sell repair and maintenance services. Among the employees involved in providing repair and main- tenance services are service advisors, partsmen, and me- chanics. Service advisors interact with customers and sell them services for their vehicles. A service advisor's duties may include meeting customers; listening to their concerns about their cars; suggesting repair and maintenance services; selling new accessories or replacement parts; recording serv- ice orders; following up with customers as the services are

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performed (for instance, if new problems are discovered); and explaining the repair and maintenance work when customers return for their vehicles. See App. 40–41; see also Bren- nan v. Deel Motors, Inc., 475 F. 2d 1095, 1096 (CA5 1973); 29 CFR § 779.372(c)(4) (1971). Partsmen obtain the vehicle parts needed to perform repair and maintenance and provide those parts to the mechanics. See § 779.372(c)(2). Mechan- ics perform the actual repair and maintenance work. See § 779.372(c)(3).

In 1961, Congress enacted a blanket exemption from the FLSA's minimum wage and overtime provisions for all auto- mobile dealership employees. Fair Labor Standards Amendments of 1961, § 9, 75 Stat. 73. In 1966, Congress re- pealed that broad exemption and replaced it with a narrower one. The revised statute did not exempt dealership employ- ees from the minimum wage requirement. It also limited the exemption from the overtime compensation requirement to cover only certain employees—in particular, “any sales- man, partsman, or mechanic primarily engaged in selling or servicing automobiles, trailers, trucks, farm implements, or aircraft” at a covered dealership. Fair Labor Standards Amendments of 1966, § 209, 80 Stat. 836. Congress author- ized the Department of Labor to “promulgate necessary rules, regulations, or orders” with respect to this new provi- sion. § 602, id., at 844.

The Department exercised that authority in 1970 and issued a regulation that defned the statutory terms “sales- man,” “partsman,” and “mechanic.” 35 Fed. Reg. 5896 (cod- ifed at 29 CFR § 779.372(c)). The Department intended its regulation as a mere interpretive rule explaining its own views, rather than a legislative rule with the force and effect of law; and so the Department did not issue the regulation through the notice-and-comment procedures of the Adminis- trative Procedure Act. See 35 Fed. Reg. 5856; see also 5 U. S. C. § 553(b)(A) (exempting interpretive rules from notice and comment).

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The 1970 interpretive regulation defned “salesman” to mean “an employee who is employed for the purpose of and is primarily engaged in making sales or obtaining orders or contracts for sale of the vehicles or farm implements which the establishment is primarily engaged in selling.” 29 CFR § 779.372(c)(1). By limiting the statutory term to salesmen who sell vehicles or farm implements, the regulation ex- cluded service advisors from the exemption, since a service advisor sells repair and maintenance services but not the ve- hicle itself. The regulation made that exclusion explicit in a later subsection: “Employees variously described as service manager, service writer, service advisor, or service salesman . . . are not exempt under [the statute]. This is true despite the fact that such an employee's principal function may be disagnosing [sic] the mechanical condition of vehicles brought in for repair, writing up work orders for repairs authorized by the customer, assigning the work to various employees and directing and checking on the work of me- chanics.” § 779.372(c)(4).

Three years later, the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Cir- cuit rejected the Department's conclusion that service ad- visors are not covered by the statutory exemption. Deel Motors, supra. Certain District Courts followed that pre- cedent. See Yenney v. Cass County Motors, 81 CCH LC ¶33,506 (Neb. 1977); Brennan v. North Bros. Ford, Inc., 76 CCH LC ¶33,247 (ED Mich. 1975), aff 'd sub nom. Dunlop v. North Bros. Ford, Inc., 529 F. 2d 524 (CA6 1976) (table); Brennan v. Import Volkswagen, Inc., 81 CCH LC ¶33,522 (Kan. 1975).

In the meantime, Congress amended the statutory provi- sion by enacting its present text, which now sets out the exemption in two subsections. Fair Labor Standards Amendments of 1974, § 14, 88 Stat. 65. The frst subsection is at issue in this case. It exempts “any salesman, parts- man, or mechanic primarily engaged in selling or servicing automobiles, trucks, or farm implements” at a covered deal-

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ership. 29 U. S. C. § 213(b)(10)(A). The second subsection exempts “any salesman primarily engaged in selling trailers, boats, or aircraft” at a covered dealership. § 213(b)(10)(B). The statute thus exempts certain employees engaged in servicing automobiles, trucks, or farm implements, but not similar employees engaged in servicing trailers, boats, or aircraft.

In 1978, the Department issued an opinion letter departing from its previous position. Taking a position consistent with the cases decided by the courts, the opinion letter stated that service advisors could be exempt under § 213(b)(10)(A). Dept. of Labor, Wage & Hour Div., Opinion Letter No. 1520 (WH–467) (1978), [1978–1981 Transfer Binder] CCH Wages–Hours Administrative Rulings ¶31,207. The letter acknowledged that the Department's new policy “represent[ed] a change from the position set forth in section 779.372(c)(4)” of its 1970 regulation. In 1987, the Depart- ment confrmed its 1978 interpretation by amending its Field Operations Handbook to clarify that service advisors should be treated as exempt under § 213(b)(10)(A). It observed that some courts had interpreted the statutory exemption to cover service advisors; and it stated that, as a result of those decisions, it would “no longer deny the [overtime] exemption for such employees.” Dept. of Labor, Wage & Hour Div., Field Operations Handbook, Insert No. 1757, 24L04–4(k) (Oct. 20, 1987). The Department again acknowledged that its new position represented a change from its 1970 regula- tion and stated that the regulation would “be revised as soon as is practicable.” Ibid.

Twenty-one years later, in 2008, the Department at last issued a notice of proposed rulemaking. 73 Fed. Reg. 43654. The notice observed that every court that had considered the question had held service advisors to be exempt under § 213(b)(10)(A), and that the Department itself had treated service advisors as exempt since 1987. Id., at 43658–43659. The Department proposed to revise its regulations to accord

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with existing practice by interpreting the exemption in § 213(b)(10)(A) to cover service advisors.

In 2011, however, the Department changed course yet again. It announced that it was “not proceeding with the proposed rule.” 76 Fed. Reg. 18833. Instead, the Depart- ment completed its 2008 notice-and-comment rulemaking by issuing a fnal rule that took the opposite position from the proposed rule. The new fnal rule followed the original 1970 regulation and interpreted the statutory term “salesman” to mean only an employee who sells automobiles, trucks, or farm implements. Id., at 18859 (codifed at 29 CFR § 779.372(c)(1)).

The Department gave little explanation for its decision to abandon its decades-old practice of treating service advisors as exempt under § 213(b)(10)(A). It was also less than pre- cise when it issued its fnal rule. As described above, the 1970 regulation included a separate subsection stating in ex- press terms that service advisors “are not exempt” under the relevant provision. 29 CFR § 779.372(c)(4). In promul- gating the 2011 regulation, however, the Department elimi- nated that separate subsection. According to the United States, this change appears to have been “an inadvertent mistake in drafting.” Tr. of Oral Arg. 50.

B

Petitioner is a Mercedes-Benz automobile dealership in the Los Angeles area. Respondents are or were employed by petitioner as service advisors. They assert that petitioner required them to be at work from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. at least fve days per week, and to be available for work matters during breaks and while on vacation. App. 39–40. Re- spondents were not paid a fxed salary or an hourly wage for their work; instead, they were paid commissions on the services they sold. Id., at 40–41.

Respondents sued petitioner in the United States District Court for the Central District of California, alleging that

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petitioner violated the FLSA by failing to pay them over- time compensation when they worked more than 40 hours in a week. Id., at 42–44. Petitioner moved to dismiss, ar- guing that the FLSA overtime provisions do not apply to respondents because service advisors are covered by the statutory exemption in § 213(b)(10)(A). The District Court agreed and granted the motion to dismiss.

The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed in relevant part. It construed the statute by deferring under Chevron U. S. A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 467 U. S. 837 (1984), to the interpretation set forth by the Department in its 2011 regulation. Applying that defer- ence, the Court of Appeals held that service advisors are not covered by the § 213(b)(10)(A) exemption. 780 F. 3d 1267 (2015). The Court of Appeals recognized, however, that its decision conficted with cases from a number of other courts. Id., at 1274 (citing, inter alia, Walton v. Greenbrier Ford, Inc., 370 F. 3d 446 (CA4 2004); Deel Motors, 475 F. 2d 1095; Thompson v. J. C. Billion, Inc., 368 Mont. 299, 294 P. 3d 397 (2013)). This Court granted certiorari to resolve the ques- tion. 577 U. S. 1098 (2016).

II

A

The full text of the statutory subsection at issue states that the overtime provisions of the FLSA shall not apply to:

“any salesman, partsman, or mechanic primarily en- gaged in selling or servicing automobiles, trucks, or farm implements, if he is employed by a nonmanufactur- ing establishment primarily engaged in the business of selling such vehicles or implements to ultimate purchas- ers.” § 213(b)(10)(A).

The question presented is whether this exemption should be interpreted to include service advisors. To resolve that question, it is necessary to determine what deference,

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if any, the courts must give to the Department's 2011 interpretation.

In the usual course, when an agency is authorized by Con- gress to issue regulations and promulgates a regulation in- terpreting a statute it enforces, the interpretation receives deference if the statute is ambiguous and if the agency's in- terpretation is reasonable. This principle is implemented by the two-step analysis set forth in Chevron. At the frst step, a court must determine whether Congress has “directly spoken to the precise question at issue.” 467 U. S., at 842. If so, “that is the end of the matter; for the court, as well as the agency, must give effect to the unambiguously expressed intent of Congress.” Id., at 842–843. If not, then at the second step the court must defer to the agency's interpreta- tion if it is “reasonable.” Id., at 844.

A premise of Chevron is that when Congress grants an agency the authority to administer a statute by issuing regu- lations with the force of law, it presumes the agency will use that authority to resolve ambiguities in the statutory scheme. See id., at 843–844; United States v. Mead Corp., 533 U. S. 218, 229–230 (2001). When Congress authorizes an agency to proceed through notice-and-comment rulemaking, that “relatively formal administrative procedure” is a “very good indicator” that Congress intended the regulation to carry the force of law, so Chevron should apply. Mead Corp., supra, at 229–230. But Chevron deference is not warranted where the regulation is “procedurally defec- tive”—that is, where the agency errs by failing to follow the correct procedures in issuing the regulation. 533 U. S., at 227; cf. Long Island Care at Home, Ltd. v. Coke, 551 U. S. 158, 174–176 (2007) (rejecting challenge to procedures by which regulation was issued and affording Chevron defer- ence). Of course, a party might be foreclosed in some in- stances from challenging the procedures used to promulgate a given rule. Cf., e. g., JEM Broadcasting Co. v. FCC, 22 F. 3d 320, 324–326 (CADC 1994); cf. also Auer v. Robbins,

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519 U. S. 452, 458–459 (1997) (party cannot challenge agency's failure to amend its rule in light of changed circum- stances without frst seeking relief from the agency). But where a proper challenge is raised to the agency procedures, and those procedures are defective, a court should not accord Chevron deference to the agency interpretation. Respond- ents do not contest the manner in which petitioner has chal- lenged the agency procedures here, and so this opinion as- sumes without deciding that the challenge was proper.

One of the basic procedural requirements of administrative rulemaking is that an agency must give adequate reasons for its decisions. The agency “must examine the relevant data and articulate a satisfactory explanation for its action includ- ing a rational connection between the facts found and the choice made.” Motor Vehicle Mfrs. Assn. of United States, Inc. v. State Farm Mut. Automobile Ins. Co., 463 U. S. 29, 43 (1983) (internal quotation marks omitted). That require- ment is satisfed when the agency's explanation is clear enough that its “path may reasonably be discerned.” Bow- man Transp., Inc. v. Arkansas-Best Freight System, Inc., 419 U. S. 281, 286 (1974). But where the agency has failed to provide even that minimal level of analysis, its action is arbitrary and capricious and so cannot carry the force of law. See 5 U. S. C. § 706(2)(A); State Farm, supra, at 42–43.

Agencies are free to change their existing policies as long as they provide a reasoned explanation for the change. See, e. g., National Cable & Telecommunications Assn. v. Brand X Internet Services, 545 U. S. 967, 981–982 (2005); Chevron, 467 U. S., at 863–864. When an agency changes its existing position, it “need not always provide a more detailed justif- cation than what would suffce for a new policy created on a blank slate.” FCC v. Fox Television Stations, Inc., 556 U. S. 502, 515 (2009). But the agency must at least “display awareness that it is changing position” and “show that there are good reasons for the new policy.” Ibid. (emphasis de- leted). In explaining its changed position, an agency must

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also be cognizant that longstanding policies may have “en- gendered serious reliance interests that must be taken into account.” Ibid.; see also Smiley v. Citibank (South Da- kota), N. A., 517 U. S. 735, 742 (1996). “In such cases it is not that further justifcation is demanded by the mere fact of policy change; but that a reasoned explanation is needed for disregarding facts and circumstances that underlay or were engendered by the prior policy.” Fox Television Sta- tions, supra, at 515–516. It follows that an “[u]nexplained inconsistency” in agency policy is “a reason for holding an interpretation to be an arbitrary and capricious change from agency practice.” Brand X, supra, at 981. An arbitrary and capricious regulation of this sort is itself unlawful and receives no Chevron deference. See Mead Corp., supra, at 227.

B

Applying those principles here, the unavoidable conclusion is that the 2011 regulation was issued without the reasoned explanation that was required in light of the Department's change in position and the signifcant reliance interests in- volved. In promulgating the 2011 regulation, the Depart- ment offered barely any explanation. A summary discus- sion may suffice in other circumstances, but here—in particular because of decades of industry reliance on the De- partment's prior policy—the explanation fell short of the agency's duty to explain why it deemed it necessary to over- rule its previous position.

The retail automobile and truck dealership industry had relied since 1978 on the Department's position that service advisors are exempt from the FLSA's overtime pay require- ments. See National Automobile Dealers Association, Com- ment Letter on Proposed Rule Updating Regulations Issued Under the Fair Labor Standards Act (Sept. 26, 2008), online at https://www.regulations.gov/#!documentDetail;D=WHD- 2008-0003-0038 (as last visited June 16, 2016). Dealerships and service advisors negotiated and structured their com-

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pensation plans against this background understanding. Requiring dealerships to adapt to the Department's new po- sition could necessitate systemic, signifcant changes to the dealerships' compensation arrangements. See Brief for Na- tional Automobile Dealers Association et al. as Amici Curiae 13–14. Dealerships whose service advisors are not compen- sated in accordance with the Department's new views could also face substantial FLSA liability, see 29 U. S. C. § 216(b), even if this risk of liability may be diminished in some cases by the existence of a separate FLSA exemption for certain employees paid on a commission basis, see § 207(i), and even if a dealership could defend against retroactive liability by showing it relied in good faith on the prior agency position, see § 259(a). In light of this background, the Department needed a more reasoned explanation for its decision to depart from its existing enforcement policy.

The Department said that, in reaching its decision, it had “carefully considered all of the comments, analyses, and ar- guments made for and against the proposed changes.” 76 Fed. Reg. 18832. And it noted that, since 1978, it had treated service advisors as exempt in certain circumstances. Id., at 18838. It also noted the comment from the National Automobile Dealers Association stating that the industry had relied on that interpretation. Ibid.

But when it came to explaining the “good reasons for the new policy,” Fox Television Stations, supra, at 515, the De- partment said almost nothing. It stated only that it would not treat service advisors as exempt because “the statute does not include such positions and the Department recog- nizes that there are circumstances under which the require- ments for the exemption would not be met.” 76 Fed. Reg. 18838. It continued that it “believes that this interpretation is reasonable” and “sets forth the appropriate approach.” Ibid. Although an agency may justify its policy choice by explaining why that policy “is more consistent with statutory language” than alternative policies, Long Island Care at

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Home, 551 U. S., at 175 (internal quotation marks omitted), the Department did not analyze or explain why the statute should be interpreted to exempt dealership employees who sell vehicles but not dealership employees who sell services (that is, service advisors). And though several public com- ments supported the Department's reading of the statute, the Department did not explain what (if anything) it found persuasive in those comments beyond the few statements above.

It is not the role of the courts to speculate on reasons that might have supported an agency's decision. “[W]e may not supply a reasoned basis for the agency's action that the agency itself has not given.” State Farm, 463 U. S., at 43 (citing SEC v. Chenery Corp., 332 U. S. 194, 196 (1947)). Whatever potential reasons the Department might have given, the agency in fact gave almost no reasons at all. In light of the serious reliance interests at stake, the Depart- ment's conclusory statements do not suffce to explain its de- cision. See Fox Television Stations, supra, at 515–516. This lack of reasoned explication for a regulation that is in- consistent with the Department's longstanding earlier posi- tion results in a rule that cannot carry the force of law. See 5 U. S. C. § 706(2)(A); State Farm, supra, at 42–43. It fol- lows that this regulation does not receive Chevron deference in the interpretation of the relevant statute.

*

*

*

For the reasons above, § 213(b)(10)(A) must be construed without placing controlling weight on the Department's 2011 regulation. Because the decision below relied on Chevron deference to this regulation, it is appropriate to remand for the Court of Appeals to interpret the statute in the frst instance. Cf. Mead, 533 U. S., at 238–239. The judgment of the Court of Appeals is vacated, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

It is so ordered.

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Ginsburg, J., concurring

Justice Ginsburg, with whom Justice Sotomayor

joins, concurring.

I agree in full that, in issuing its 2011 rule, the Department of Labor did not satisfy its basic obligation to explain “that there are good reasons for [a] new policy.” FCC v. Fox Tele- vision Stations, Inc., 556 U. S. 502, 515 (2009). The Depart- ment may have adequate reasons to construe the Fair Labor Standards Act automobile-dealership exemption as it did. The 2011 rulemaking tells us precious little, however, about what those reasons are.1

I write separately to stress that nothing in today's opinion disturbs well-established law. In particular, where an agency has departed from a prior position, there is no “heightened standard” of arbitrary-and-capricious review. Id., at 514. See also ante, at 221. An agency must “display awareness that it is changing position” and “show that there are good reasons for the new policy.” Fox, 556 U. S., at 515 (emphasis deleted). “But it need not demonstrate to a court's satisfaction that the reasons for the new policy are

1 Unlike Justice Thomas, I am not persuaded that, sans Chevron U. S. A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 467 U. S. 837 (1984), the Ninth Circuit should conclude on remand that service advisors are categorically exempt from hours regulations. As that court previously explained, “[s]ervice advisors may be `salesmen' in a generic sense, but they [may fall outside the exemption because they] do not personally sell cars and they do not personally service cars.” 780 F. 3d 1267, 1274 (2015). Moreover, in its briefng before this Court, the De- partment of Labor responded to the argument that “the exemption's application to a `partsman' ” “confrm[s] that a service advisor is a sales- man primarily engaged in servicing automobiles.” Post, at 229 (Thomas, J., dissenting). See Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 22–23 (maintaining that partsmen, unlike service advisors, actually engage in maintenance and repair work); Brief for Respondents 11 (con- tending that partsmen “ge[t] their hands dirty” by “work[ing] as a mechanic 's r ight-hand man or woman”); i d., at 32 – 35 (cat a log- ing descriptions of partsmen responsibilities drawn from occupational handbooks and training manuals). The Court appropriately leaves the proper ranking of service advisors to the Court of Appeals in the frst instance.

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Ginsburg, J., concurring

better than the reasons for the old one; it suffces that the new policy is permissible under the statute, that there are good reasons for it, and that the agency believes it to be better, which the conscious change of course adequately indi- cates.” Ibid.

The Court's bottom line remains unaltered: “ `[U]nex- plained inconsistency' in agency policy is `a reason for hold- ing an interpretation to be an arbitrary and capricious change from agency practice.' ” Ante, at 222 (quoting Na- tional Cable & Telecommunications Assn. v. Brand X In- ternet Services, 545 U. S. 967, 981 (2005)). Industry reliance may spotlight the inadequacy of an agency's explanation. See ante, at 222 (“decades of industry reliance” make “sum- mary discussion” inappropriate). But reliance does not overwhelm good reasons for a policy change. Even if the Department's changed position would “necessitate systemic, signifcant changes to the dealerships' compensation ar- rangements,” ante, at 223, the Department would not be dis- armed from determining that the benefts of overtime cover- age outweigh those costs.2 “If the action rests upon . . . an

2 If the Department decides to reissue the 2011 rule, I doubt that reli- ance interests would pose an insurmountable obstacle. As the Court ac- knowledges, ante, at 223, an affrmative defense in the Fair Labor Stand- ards Act (FLSA) protects regulated parties against retroactive liability for actions taken in good-faith reliance on superseded agency guidance, 29 U. S. C. § 259(a). And a separate FLSA exemption covers many service advisors: retail or service workers who receive at least half of their pay on commission, so long as their regular rate of pay is more than 1½ times the minimum wage. Ante, at 223 (citing § 207(i)); see Brief for Petitioner 13, n. 4 (many service advisors are paid on a commission basis). Thus, the cost of the Department's policy shift may be considerably less than the dealerships project. Finally, I note, the extent to which the Depart- ment is obliged to address reliance will be affected by the thoroughness of public comments it receives on the issue. In response to its 2008 pro- posal, the Department received only conclusory references to industry reli- ance interests. See ante, at 222 (citing comment from National Automo- bile Dealers Association). An agency cannot be faulted for failing to discuss at length matters only cursorily raised before it.

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exercise of judgment in an area which Congress has en- trusted to the agency[,] of course it must not be set aside because the reviewing court might have made a different determination were it empowered to do so.” SEC v. Chen- ery Corp., 318 U. S. 80, 94 (1943).

Justice Thomas, with whom Justice Alito joins,

dissenting.

The Court granted this case to decide whether an exemp- tion under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), 29 U. S. C. § 201 et seq., “requires payment of increased compensation to certain automobile dealership employees”— known as serv- ice advisors—“for overtime work.” Ante, at 214; see also ante, at 215, 219. The majority declines to resolve that question. Instead, after explaining why the Court owes no deference to the Department of Labor's regulation purport- ing to interpret this provision, see Chevron U. S. A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 467 U. S. 837, 843 (1984), the majority leaves it “for the Court of Appeals to interpret the statute in the frst instance.” Ante, at 224.

I agree with the majority's conclusion that we owe no Chevron deference to the Department's position because “deference is not warranted where [a] regulation is `proce- durally defective.' ” Ante, at 220. But I disagree with its ultimate decision to punt on the issue before it. We have an “obligation . . . to decide the merits of the question pre- sented.” CBOCS West, Inc. v. Humphries, 553 U. S. 442, 472 (2008) (Thomas, J., dissenting). We need not wade into the murky waters of Chevron deference to decide whether the Ninth Circuit's reading of the statute was correct. We must instead examine the statutory text. That text reveals that service advisors are salesmen primarily engaged in the selling of services for automobiles. Accordingly, I would re- verse the Ninth Circuit's judgment.

Federal law requires overtime pay for certain employees who work more than 40 hours per week. § 207(a)(2)(C).

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But the FLSA exempts various categories of employees from this overtime requirement. § 213. The question be- fore the Court is whether the following exemption encom- passes service advisors:

.

.

“The provisions of section 207 of this title shall not apply with respect to—

. “(10)(A) any salesman, partsman, or mechanic primar- ily engaged in selling or servicing automobiles, trucks, or farm implements, if he is employed by a nonmanufac- turing establishment primarily engaged in the business of selling such vehicles or implements to ultimate pur- chasers.” § 213(b).

.

.

I start with the uncontroversial notion that a service advi- sor is a “salesman.” The FLSA does not defne the term “salesman,” so “we give the term its ordinary meaning.” Taniguchi v. Kan Pacifc Saipan, Ltd., 566 U. S. 560, 566 (2012). A “salesman” is someone who sells goods or serv- ices. 14 Oxford English Dictionary 391 (2d ed. 1989) (“[a] man whose business it is to sell goods or conduct sales”); Random House Dictionary of the English Language 1262 (1966) (Random House) (“a man who sells goods, services, etc.”). Service advisors, whose role it is to “interact with customers and sell them services for their vehicles,” ante, at 214–215, are plainly “salesm[e]n.” See ante, at 216 (catalog- ing sales-related duties of service advisors).

A service advisor, however, is not “primarily engaged in selling . . . automobiles.” § 213(b)(10)(A). On the contrary, a service advisor is a “salesman” who sells servicing solu- tions. Ante, at 214. So the exemption applies only if it cov- ers not only those salesmen primarily engaged in selling au- tomobiles but also those salesmen primarily engaged in servicing automobiles.

The exemption's structure confrms that salesmen could do both. The exemption contains three nouns (“salesman,

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partsman, or mechanic”) and two gerunds (“selling or servic- ing”). The three nouns are connected by the disjunctive “or,” as are the gerunds. So unless context dictates otherwise, a salesman can either be engaged in selling or servicing automo- biles. Cf. Reiter v. Sonotone Corp., 442 U. S. 330, 339 (1979). Context does not dictate otherwise. A salesman, namely, one who sells servicing solutions, can be “primarily engaged in . . . servicing automobiles.” § 213(b)(10)(A). The FLSA does not defne the term “servicing,” but its ordinary mean- ing includes both “[t]he action of maintaining or repairing a motor vehicle” and “the action of providing a service.” 15 Oxford English Dictionary 39; see also Random House 1304 (defning “service” to mean “the providing . . . of . . . activities required by the public, as maintenance, repair, etc.”). A service advisor's selling of service solutions fts both defni- tions. The service advisor is the customer's liaison for pur- poses of deciding what parts are necessary to maintain or repair a vehicle and therefore is primarily engaged in “the action of maintaining or repairing a motor vehicle” or “the action of providing a service” for an automobile.

Other features of the exemption confrm that a service ad- visor is a salesman primarily engaged in servicing automo- biles. Consider the exemption's application to a “parts- man.” Like a service advisor, a partsman neither sells veh icles nor repairs veh icles h i mself. See 29 CFR § 779.372(c)(2) (2015) (defning “partsman” as “any employee employed for the purpose of and primarily engaged in requi- sitioning, stocking, and dispensing parts”). For the provi- sion to exempt partsmen, then, the phrase “primarily en- gaged in . . . servicing” must cover some employees who do not themselves perform repair or maintenance. So “servic- ing” refers not only to the physical act of repairing or main- taining a vehicle but also to acts integral to the servicing process more generally.

Respondents' contrary contentions are unavailing. They frst invoke the distributive canon: “Where a sentence con-

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tains several antecedents and several consequents,” the dis- tributive canon instructs courts to “read [those several terms] distributively and apply the words to the subjects which, by context, they seem most properly to relate.” 2A N. Singer & S. Singer, Sutherland on Statutory Construction § 47.26, p. 448 (rev. 7th ed. 2014). Respondents accordingly maintain that 29 U. S. C. § 213(b)(10)(A) exempts only sales- men primarily engaged in selling automobiles. Brief for Re- spondents 20–26. But the distributive canon is less helpful in cases such as this because the antecedents and conse- quents cannot be readily matched on a one-to-one basis. Here, there are three nouns to be matched with only two gerunds, so the canon does not overcome the exemption's plain meaning. Perhaps respondents might have a better argument if the statute exempted “salesman or mechanics who primarily engage in selling or servicing automobiles.” In such a case, one might assume that Congress meant the nouns and gerunds to match on a one-to-one basis, and the distributive canon could be utilized to determine how the matching should occur. But that is not the statute before us. For the reasons explained, supra, at 228–229, the plain meaning of the various terms in the exemption establish that the term “salesman” is not limited to only those who sell automobiles. It also extends to those “primarily engaged in . . . servicing automobiles.” § 213(b)(10)(A).

Respondents also resist this natural reading of the exemp- tion by invoking the made-up canon that courts must nar- rowly construe the FLSA exemptions. Brief for Respond- ents 41–42. The Ninth Circuit agreed with respondents on this score. 780 F. 3d 1267, 1271–1272, and n. 3 (2015). The court should not do so again on remand. We have declined to apply that canon on two recent occasions, one of which also required the Court to parse the meaning of an exemption in § 213. Christopher v. SmithKline Beecham Corp., 567 U. S. 142, 164, n. 21 (2012); see also Sandifer v. United States Steel Corp., 571 U. S. 220, 232, n. 7 (2014). There is no basis to

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infer that Congress means anything beyond what a statute plainly says simply because the legislation in question could be classifed as “remedial.” See Scalia, Assorted Canards of Contemporary Legal Analysis, 40 Case W. Res. L. Rev. 581, 581–586 (1990). Indeed, this canon appears to “res[t] on an elemental misunderstanding of the legislative process,” viz., “that Congress intend[s] statutes to extend as far as possible in service of a singular objective.” Brief for Chamber of Commerce of the United States of America et al. as Amici Curiae 7.

*

*

*

For the foregoing reasons, I would hold that the FLSA exemption set out in § 213(b)(10)(A) covers the service advi- sors in this case. Service advisors are “primarily engaged in . . . servicing automobiles,” given their integral role in selling and providing vehicle services. Accordingly, I would reverse the judgment of the Ninth Circuit.

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UTAH v. STRIEFF

certiorari to the supreme court of utah

No. 14–1373. Argued February 22, 2016—Decided June 20, 2016

Narcotics detective Douglas Fackrell conducted surveillance on a South Salt Lake City residence based on an anonymous tip about drug activity. The number of people he observed making brief visits to the house over the course of a week made him suspicious that the occupants were deal- ing drugs. After observing respondent Edward Strieff leave the resi- dence, Offcer Fackrell detained Strieff at a nearby parking lot, identify- ing himself and asking Strieff what he was doing at the house. He then requested Strieff 's identifcation and relayed the information to a police dispatcher, who informed him that Strieff had an outstanding arrest warrant for a traffic violation. Officer Fackrell arrested Strieff, searched him, and found methamphetamine and drug paraphernalia. Strieff moved to suppress the evidence, arguing that it was derived from an unlawful investigatory stop. The trial court denied the motion, and the Utah Court of Appeals affrmed. The Utah Supreme Court reversed, however, and ordered the evidence suppressed.

Held: The evidence Offcer Fackrell seized incident to Strieff 's arrest is admissible based on an application of the attenuation factors from Brown v. Illinois, 422 U. S. 590. In this case, there was no fagrant police misconduct. Therefore, Offcer Fackrell's discovery of a valid, pre-existing, and untainted arrest warrant attenuated the connection between the unconstitutional investigatory stop and the evidence seized incident to a lawful arrest. Pp. 237–243.

(a) As the primary judicial remedy for deterring Fourth Amendment violations, the exclusionary rule encompasses both the “primary evi- dence obtained as a direct result of an illegal search or seizure” and, relevant here, “evidence later discovered and found to be derivative of an illegality.” Segura v. United States, 468 U. S. 796, 804. But to en- sure that those deterrence benefts are not outweighed by the rule's substantial social costs, there are several exceptions to the rule. One exception is the attenuation doctrine, which provides for admissibility when the connection between unconstitutional police conduct and the evidence is suffciently remote or has been interrupted by some inter- vening circumstance. See Hudson v. Michigan, 547 U. S. 586, 593. Pp. 237–238.

(b) As a threshold matter, the attenuation doctrine is not limited to the defendant's independent acts. The doctrine therefore applies here,

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where the intervening circumstance is the discovery of a valid, pre- existing, and untainted arrest warrant. Assuming, without deciding, that Offcer Fackrell lacked reasonable suspicion to stop Strieff initially, the discovery of that arrest warrant attenuated the connection between the unlawful stop and the evidence seized from Strieff incident to his arrest. Pp. 238–243.

(1) Three factors articulated in Brown v. Illinois, 422 U. S. 590, lead to this conclusion. The frst, “temporal proximity” between the initially unlawful stop and the search, id., at 603, favors suppressing the evidence. Offcer Fackrell discovered drug contraband on Strieff only minutes after the illegal stop. In contrast, the second factor, “the pres- ence of intervening circumstances,” id., at 603–604, strongly favors the State. The existence of a valid warrant, predating the investigation and entirely unconnected with the stop, favors fnding suffcient attenua- tion between the unlawful conduct and the discovery of evidence. That warrant authorized Offcer Fackrell to arrest Strieff, and once the arrest was authorized, his search of Strieff incident to that arrest was undis- putedly lawful. The third factor, “the purpose and fagrancy of the of- fcial misconduct,” id., at 604, also strongly favors the State. Offcer Fackrell was at most negligent, but his errors in judgment hardly rise to a purposeful or fagrant violation of Strieff 's Fourth Amendment rights. After the unlawful stop, his conduct was lawful, and there is no indica- tion that the stop was part of any systemic or recurrent police miscon- duct. Pp. 239–242.

(2) Strieff 's counterarguments are unpersuasive. First, neither Offcer Fackrell's purpose nor the fagrancy of the violation rises to a level of misconduct warranting suppression. Offcer Fackrell's purpose was not to conduct a suspicionless fshing expedition but was to gather information about activity inside a house whose occupants were legiti- mately suspected of dealing drugs. Strieff confates the standard for an illegal stop with the standard for fagrancy, which requires more than the mere absence of proper cause. Second, it is unlikely that the preva- lence of outstanding warrants will lead to dragnet searches by police. Such misconduct would expose police to civil liability and, in any event, is already accounted for by Brown's “purpose and fagrancy” factor. Pp. 242–243.

2015 UT 2, 357 P. 3d 532, reversed.

Thomas, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Roberts, C. J., and Kennedy, Breyer, and Alito, JJ., joined. Sotomayor, J., fled a dissenting opinion, in which Ginsburg, J., joined as to Parts I, II, and III, post, p. 243. Kagan, J., fled a dissenting opinion, in which Ginsburg, J., joined, post, p. 255.

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Tyler R. Green, Solicitor General of Utah, argued the cause for petitioner. With him on the briefs were Sean D. Reyes, Attorney General, Laura B. Dupaix, Deputy Solicitor General, Thomas B. Brunker, and Jeffrey S. Gray.

John F. Bash argued the cause for the United States as amicus curiae urging reversal. With him on the brief were Solicitor General Verrilli, Assistant Attorney General Caldwell, Deputy Solicitor General Dreeben, and David M. Lieberman.

Joan C. Watt argued the cause for respondent. With her on the brief were Stuart Banner and Patrick L. Anderson.*

Justice Thomas delivered the opinion of the Court. To enforce the Fourth Amendment's prohibition against “unreasonable searches and seizures,” this Court has at times required courts to exclude evidence obtained by uncon-

*Briefs of amici curiae urging reversal were fled for the State of Michi- gan et al. by Bill Schuette, Attorney General of Michigan, Aaron D. Lind- strom, Solicitor General, and Kathryn M. Dalzell, Assistant Solicitor General, and by the Attorneys General and other offcials for their respec- tive States as follows: Luther Strange of Alabama, Mark Brnovich of Ari- zona, Leslie Rutledge of Arkansas, Cynthia Coffman of Colorado, Pamela Jo Bondi of Florida, Douglas S. Chin of Hawaii, Lisa Madigan of Illinois, Gregory F. Zoeller of Indiana, Derek Schmidt of Kansas, Jack Conway of Kentucky, James D. “Buddy” Caldwell of Louisiana, Janet T. Mills of Maine, Douglas F. Gansler of Maryland, Timothy C. Fox of Montana, Douglas J. Peterson of Nebraska, John J. Hoffman, Acting Attorney Gen- eral of New Jersey, Adam Paul Laxalt of Nevada, Wayne Stenehjem of North Dakota, Michael DeWine of Ohio, Ellen F. Rosenblum of Oregon, E. Scott Pruitt of Oklahoma, Bruce R. Beemer, First Deputy Attorney General of Pennsylvania, Peter F. Kilmartin of Rhode Island, Alan Wil- son of South Carolina, Marty J. Jackley of South Dakota, Herbert H. Slatery III of Tennessee, Ken Paxton of Texas, Patrick Morrisey of West Virginia, and Peter K. Michael of Wyoming; and for the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation by Kent S. Scheidegger.

Briefs of amici curiae urging affrmance were fled for the American Civil Liberties Union et al. by Michael B. Kimberly, Steven R. Shapiro, and Jeffrey L. Fisher; for the Electronic Privacy Information Center et al. by Marc Rotenberg and Alan Butler; and for Tracy E. Labrusciano et al. by Norman M. Garland and Michael M. Epstein, both pro se.

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stitutional police conduct. But the Court has also held that, even when there is a Fourth Amendment violation, this ex- clusionary rule does not apply when the costs of exclusion outweigh its deterrent benefts. In some cases, for example, the link between the unconstitutional conduct and the discov- ery of the evidence is too attenuated to justify suppression. The question in this case is whether this attenuation doctrine applies when an offcer makes an unconstitutional investiga- tory stop; learns during that stop that the suspect is subject to a valid arrest warrant; and proceeds to arrest the suspect and seize incriminating evidence during a search incident to that arrest. We hold that the evidence the offcer seized as part of the search incident to arrest is admissible because the offcer's discovery of the arrest warrant attenuated the connection between the unlawful stop and the evidence seized incident to arrest.

I

This case began with an anonymous tip. In December 2006, someone called the South Salt Lake City police's drug- tip line to report “narcotics activity” at a particular resi- dence. App. 15. Narcotics detective Douglas Fackrell in- vestigated the tip. Over the course of about a week, Offcer Fackrell conducted intermittent surveillance of the home. He observed visitors who left a few minutes after arriving at the house. These visits were suffciently frequent to raise his suspicion that the occupants were dealing drugs.

One of those visitors was respondent Edward Strieff. Of- fcer Fackrell observed Strieff exit the house and walk to- ward a nearby convenience store. In the store's parking lot, Offcer Fackrell detained Strieff, identifed himself, and asked Strieff what he was doing at the residence.

As part of the stop, Offcer Fackrell requested Strieff 's identifcation, and Strieff produced his Utah identifcation card. Offcer Fackrell relayed Strieff 's information to a po- lice dispatcher, who reported that Strieff had an outstanding arrest warrant for a traffc violation. Offcer Fackrell then arrested Strieff pursuant to that warrant. When Offcer

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Fackrell searched Strieff incident to the arrest, he discov- ered a baggie of methamphetamine and drug paraphernalia. The State charged Strieff with unlawful possession of methamphetamine and drug paraphernalia. Strieff moved to suppress the evidence, arguing that the evidence was in- admissible because it was derived from an unlawful investi- gatory stop. At the suppression hearing, the prosecutor conceded that Offcer Fackrell lacked reasonable suspicion for the stop but argued that the evidence should not be sup- pressed because the existence of a valid arrest warrant at- tenuated the connection between the unlawful stop and the discovery of the contraband.

The trial court agreed with the State and admitted the evidence. The court found that the short time between the illegal stop and the search weighed in favor of suppressing the evidence, but that two countervailing considerations made it admissible. First, the court considered the presence of a valid arrest warrant to be an “ `extraordinary interven- ing circumstance.' ” App. to Pet. for Cert. 102 (quoting United States v. Simpson, 439 F. 3d 490, 496 (CA8 2006)). Second, the court stressed the absence of fagrant miscon- duct by Offcer Fackrell, who was conducting a legitimate investigation of a suspected drug house.

Strieff conditionally pleaded guilty to reduced charges of attempted possession of a controlled substance and posses- sion of drug paraphernalia, but reserved his right to appeal the trial court's denial of the suppression motion. The Utah Court of Appeals affrmed. 2012 UT App 245, 286 P. 3d 317. The Utah Supreme Court reversed. 2015 UT 2, 357 P. 3d 532. It held that the evidence was inadmissible because only “a voluntary act of a defendant's free will (as in a confes- sion or consent to search)” suffciently breaks the connection between an illegal search and the discovery of evidence. Id., at 536. Because Offcer Fackrell's discovery of a valid arrest warrant did not ft this description, the court ordered the evidence suppressed. Ibid.

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We granted certiorari to resolve disagreement about how the attenuation doctrine applies where an unconstitutional detention leads to the discovery of a valid arrest warrant. 576 U. S. 1094 (2015). Compare, e. g., United States v. Green, 111 F. 3d 515, 522–523 (CA7 1997) (holding that dis- covery of the warrant is a dispositive intervening circum- stance where police misconduct was not fagrant), with, e. g., State v. Moralez, 297 Kan. 397, 415, 300 P. 3d 1090, 1102 (2013) (assigning little signifcance to the discovery of the warrant). We now reverse.

II

A

The Fourth Amendment protects “[t]he right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.” Because off- cers who violated the Fourth Amendment were traditionally considered trespassers, individuals subject to unconstitu- tional searches or seizures historically enforced their rights through tort suits or self-help. Davies, Recovering the Original Fourth Amendment, 98 Mich. L. Rev. 547, 625 (1999). In the 20th century, however, the exclusionary rule—the rule that often requires trial courts to exclude un- lawfully seized evidence in a criminal trial—became the prin- cipal judicial remedy to deter Fourth Amendment violations. See, e. g., Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U. S. 643, 655 (1961).

Under the Court's precedents, the exclusionary rule en- compasses both the “primary evidence obtained as a direct result of an illegal search or seizure” and, relevant here, “evi- dence later discovered and found to be derivative of an ille- gality,” the so-called “ `fruit of the poisonous tree.' ” Segura v. United States, 468 U. S. 796, 804 (1984). But the signif- cant costs of this rule have led us to deem it “applicable only . . . where its deterrence benefts outweigh its substantial social costs.” Hudson v. Michigan, 547 U. S. 586, 591 (2006) (internal quotation marks omitted). “Suppression of evi-

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dence . . . has always been our last resort, not our frst im- pulse.” Ibid.

We have accordingly recognized several exceptions to the rule. Three of these exceptions involve the causal relation- ship between the unconstitutional act and the discovery of evidence. First, the independent source doctrine allows trial courts to admit evidence obtained in an unlawful search if offcers independently acquired it from a separate, inde- pendent source. See Murray v. United States, 487 U. S. 533, 537 (1988). Second, the inevitable discovery doctrine allows for the admission of evidence that would have been discov- ered even without the unconstitutional source. See Nix v. Williams, 467 U. S. 431, 443–444 (1984). Third, and at issue here, is the attenuation doctrine: Evidence is admissible when the connection between unconstitutional police conduct and the evidence is remote or has been interrupted by some intervening circumstance, so that “the interest protected by the constitutional guarantee that has been violated would not be served by suppression of the evidence obtained.” Hudson, supra, at 593.

B

Turning to the application of the attenuation doctrine to this case, we frst address a threshold question: whether this doctrine applies at all to a case like this, where the interven- ing circumstance that the State relies on is the discovery of a valid, pre-existing, and untainted arrest warrant. The Utah Supreme Court declined to apply the attenuation doctrine because it read our precedents as applying the doctrine only “to circumstances involving an independent act of a defend- ant's `free will' in confessing to a crime or consenting to a search.” 357 P. 3d, at 544. In this Court, Strieff has not defended this argument, and we disagree with it, as well. The attenuation doctrine evaluates the causal link between the government's unlawful act and the discovery of evidence, which often has nothing to do with a defendant's actions.

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And the logic of our prior attenuation cases is not limited to independent acts by the defendant.

It remains for us to address whether the discovery of a valid arrest warrant was a suffcient intervening event to break the causal chain between the unlawful stop and the discovery of drug-related evidence on Strieff 's person. The three factors articulated in Brown v. Illinois, 422 U. S. 590 (1975), guide our analysis. First, we look to the “temporal proximity” between the unconstitutional conduct and the dis- covery of evidence to determine how closely the discovery of evidence followed the unconstitutional search. Id., at 603. Second, we consider “the presence of intervening circum- stances.” Id., at 603–604. Third, and “particularly” sig- nifcant, we examine “the purpose and fagrancy of the off- cial misconduct.” Id., at 604. In evaluating these factors, we assume without deciding (because the State conceded the point) that Offcer Fackrell lacked reasonable suspicion to ini- tially stop Strieff. And, because we ultimately conclude that the warrant breaks the causal chain, we also have no need to decide whether the warrant's existence alone would make the initial stop constitutional even if Offcer Fackrell was unaware of its existence.

1

The frst factor, temporal proximity between the initially unlawful stop and the search, favors suppressing the evi- dence. Our precedents have declined to fnd that this factor favors attenuation unless “substantial time” elapses between an unlawful act and when the evidence is obtained. Kaupp v. Texas, 538 U. S. 626, 633 (2003) (per curiam). Here, how- ever, Offcer Fackrell discovered drug contraband on Strieff's person only minutes after the illegal stop. See App. 18–19. As the Court explained in Brown, such a short time interval counsels in favor of suppression; there, we found that the confession should be suppressed, relying in part on the “less

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than two hours” that separated the unconstitutional arrest and the confession. 422 U. S., at 604.

In contrast, the second factor, the presence of intervening circumstances, strongly favors the State. In Segura, 468 U. S. 796, the Court addressed similar facts to those here and found suffcient intervening circumstances to allow the admission of evidence. There, agents had probable cause to believe that apartment occupants were dealing cocaine. Id., at 799–800. They sought a warrant. In the meantime, they entered the apartment, arrested an occupant, and discovered evidence of drug activity during a limited search for secu- rity reasons. Id., at 800–801. The next evening, the Magis- trate Judge issued the search warrant. Ibid. This Court deemed the evidence admissible notwithstanding the illegal search because the information supporting the warrant was “wholly unconnected with the [arguably illegal] entry and was known to the agents well before the initial entry.” Id., at 814.

Segura, of course, applied the independent source doctrine because the unlawful entry “did not contribute in any way to discovery of the evidence seized under the warrant.” Id., at 815. But the Segura Court suggested that the existence of a valid warrant favors fnding that the connection between unlawful conduct and the discovery of evidence is “suff- ciently attenuated to dissipate the taint.” Ibid. That prin- ciple applies here.

In this case, the warrant was valid, it predated Offcer Fackrell's investigation, and it was entirely unconnected with the stop. And once Offcer Fackrell discovered the warrant, he had an obligation to arrest Strieff. “A warrant is a judi- cial mandate to an offcer to conduct a search or make an arrest, and the offcer has a sworn duty to carry out its provi- sions.” United States v. Leon, 468 U. S. 897, 920, n. 21 (1984) (internal quotation marks omitted). Offcer Fackrell's ar- rest of Strieff thus was a ministerial act that was inde- pendently compelled by the pre-existing warrant. And once Offcer Fackrell was authorized to arrest Strieff, it was

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undisputedly lawful to search Strieff as an incident of his arrest to protect Offcer Fackrell's safety. See Arizona v. Gant, 556 U. S. 332, 339 (2009) (explaining the permissible scope of searches incident to arrest).

Finally, the third factor, “the purpose and fagrancy of the offcial misconduct,” Brown, supra, at 604, also strongly fa- vors the State. The exclusionary rule exists to deter police misconduct. Davis v. United States, 564 U. S. 229, 236–237 (2011). The third factor of the attenuation doctrine refects that rationale by favoring exclusion only when the police misconduct is most in need of deterrence—that is, when it is purposeful or fagrant.

Offcer Fackrell was at most negligent. In stopping Strieff, Offcer Fackrell made two good-faith mistakes. First, he had not observed what time Strieff entered the sus- pected drug house, so he did not know how long Strieff had been there. Offcer Fackrell thus lacked a suffcient basis to conclude that Strieff was a short-term visitor who may have been consummating a drug transaction. Second, because he lacked confrmation that Strieff was a short-term visitor, Of- fcer Fackrell should have asked Strieff whether he would speak with him, instead of demanding that Strieff do so. Of- fcer Fackrell's stated purpose was to “fnd out what was going on [in] the house.” App. 17. Nothing prevented him from approaching Strieff simply to ask. See Florida v. Bos- tick, 501 U. S. 429, 434 (1991) (“[A] seizure does not occur simply because a police offcer approaches an individual and asks a few questions”). But these errors in judgment hardly rise to a purposeful or fagrant violation of Strieff's Fourth Amendment rights.

While Offcer Fackrell's decision to initiate the stop was mistaken, his conduct thereafter was lawful. The offcer's decision to run the warrant check was a “negligibly burden- some precautio[n]” for offcer safety. Rodriguez v. United States, 575 U. S. 348, 356 (2015). And Offcer Fackrell's ac- tual search of Strieff was a lawful search incident to arrest. See Gant, supra, at 339.

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Opinion of the Court

Moreover, there is no indication that this unlawful stop was part of any systemic or recurrent police misconduct. To the contrary, all the evidence suggests that the stop was an isolated instance of negligence that occurred in connection with a bona fde investigation of a suspected drug house. Offcer Fackrell saw Strieff leave a suspected drug house. And his suspicion about the house was based on an anony- mous tip and his personal observations.

Applying these factors, we hold that the evidence discov- ered on Strieff's person was admissible because the unlawful stop was suffciently attenuated by the pre-existing arrest warrant. Although the illegal stop was close in time to Strieff's arrest, that consideration is outweighed by two fac- tors supporting the State. The outstanding arrest warrant for Strieff's arrest is a critical intervening circumstance that is wholly independent of the illegal stop. The discovery of that warrant broke the causal chain between the unconstitu- tional stop and the discovery of evidence by compelling Off- cer Fackrell to arrest Strieff. And, it is especially signif- cant that there is no evidence that Offcer Fackrell's illegal stop refected fagrantly unlawful police misconduct.

2

We fnd Strieff 's counterarguments unpersuasive. First, he argues that the attenuation doctrine should not apply because the offcer's stop was purposeful and fagrant. He asserts that Offcer Fackrell stopped him solely to fsh for evidence of suspected wrongdoing. But Offcer Fackrell sought information from Strieff to fnd out what was happen- ing inside a house whose occupants were legitimately sus- pected of dealing drugs. This was not a suspicionless fsh- ing expedition “in the hope that something would turn up.” Taylor v. Alabama, 457 U. S. 687, 691 (1982).

Strieff argues, moreover, that Offcer Fackrell's conduct was fagrant because he detained Strieff without the neces- sary level of cause (here, reasonable suspicion). But that confates the standard for an illegal stop with the standard

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for fagrancy. For the violation to be fagrant, more severe police misconduct is required than the mere absence of proper cause for the seizure. See, e. g., Kaupp, 538 U. S., at 628, 633 (fnding fagrant violation where a warrantless ar- rest was made in the arrestee's home after police were de- nied a warrant and at least some offcers knew they lacked probable cause). Neither the offcer's alleged purpose nor the fagrancy of the violation rise to a level of misconduct to warrant suppression.

Second, Strieff argues that, because of the prevalence of outstanding arrest warrants in many jurisdictions, police will engage in dragnet searches if the exclusionary rule is not applied. We think that this outcome is unlikely. Such wan- ton conduct would expose police to civil liability. See 42 U. S. C. § 1983; Monell v. New York City Dept. of Social Servs., 436 U. S. 658, 690 (1978); see also Segura, 468 U. S., at 812. And in any event, the Brown factors take account of the purpose and fagrancy of police misconduct. Were ev- idence of a dragnet search presented here, the application of the Brown factors could be different. But there is no evi- dence that the concerns that Strieff raises with the criminal justice system are present in South Salt Lake City, Utah.

*

*

*

We hold that the evidence Offcer Fackrell seized as part of his search incident to arrest is admissible because his dis- covery of the arrest warrant attenuated the connection be- tween the unlawful stop and the evidence seized from Strieff incident to arrest. The judgment of the Utah Supreme Court, accordingly, is reversed.

It is so ordered.

Justice Sotomayor, with whom Justice Ginsburg joins

as to Parts I, II, and III, dissenting.

The Court today holds that the discovery of a warrant for an unpaid parking ticket will forgive a police offcer's viola- tion of your Fourth Amendment rights. Do not be soothed

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by the opinion's technical language: This case allows the po- lice to stop you on the street, demand your identifcation, and check it for outstanding traffc warrants—even if you are doing nothing wrong. If the offcer discovers a warrant for a fne you forgot to pay, courts will now excuse his illegal stop and will admit into evidence anything he happens to fnd by searching you after arresting you on the warrant. Because the Fourth Amendment should prohibit, not permit, such misconduct, I dissent.

I

Minutes after Edward Strieff walked out of a South Salt Lake City home, an offcer stopped him, questioned him, and took his identifcation to run it through a police database. The offcer did not suspect that Strieff had done anything wrong. Strieff just happened to be the frst person to leave a house that the offcer thought might contain “drug activ- ity.” App. 16–19.

As the State of Utah concedes, this stop was illegal. Id., at 24. The Fourth Amendment protects people from “un- reasonable searches and seizures.” An offcer breaches that protection when he detains a pedestrian to check his license without any evidence that the person is engaged in a crime. Delaware v. Prouse, 440 U. S. 648, 663 (1979); Terry v. Ohio, 392 U. S. 1, 21 (1968). The offcer deepens the breach when he prolongs the detention just to fsh further for evidence of wrongdoing. Rodr iguez v. Uni ted States, 575 U. S. 348, 354–356 (2015). In his search for lawbreaking, the of- fcer in this case himself broke the law.

The offcer learned that Strieff had a “small traffc war- rant.” App. 19. Pursuant to that warrant, he arrested Strieff and, conducting a search incident to the arrest, dis- covered methamphetamine in Strieff 's pockets.

Utah charged Strieff with illegal drug possession. Before trial, Strieff argued that admitting the drugs into evidence would condone the offcer's misbehavior. The methamphet- amine, he reasoned, was the product of the offcer's illegal

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stop. Admitting it would tell offcers that unlawfully dis- covering even a “small traffc warrant” would give them li- cense to search for evidence of unrelated offenses. The Utah Supreme Court unanimously agreed with Strieff. A majority of this Court now reverses.

II

It is tempting in a case like this, where illegal conduct by an offcer uncovers illegal conduct by a civilian, to forgive the offcer. After all, his instincts, although unconstitu- tional, were correct. But a basic principle lies at the heart of the Fourth Amendment: Two wrongs don't make a right. See Weeks v. United States, 232 U. S. 383, 392 (1914). When “lawless police conduct” uncovers evidence of lawless civilian conduct, this Court has long required later criminal trials to exclude the illegally obtained evidence. Terry, 392 U. S., at 12; Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U. S. 643, 655 (1961). For example, if an offcer breaks into a home and fnds a forged check lying around, that check may not be used to prosecute the home- owner for bank fraud. We would describe the check as “ `fruit of the poisonous tree.' ” Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U. S. 471, 488 (1963). Fruit that must be cast aside in- cludes not only evidence directly found by an illegal search but also evidence “come at by exploitation of that illegal- ity.” Ibid.

This “exclusionary rule” removes an incentive for offcers to search us without proper justifcation. Terry, 392 U. S., at 12. It also keeps courts from being “made party to law- less invasions of the constitutional rights of citizens by per- mitting unhindered governmental use of the fruits of such invasions.” Id., at 13. When courts admit only lawfully ob- tained evidence, they encourage “those who formulate law enforcement policies, and the offcers who implement them, to incorporate Fourth Amendment ideals into their value system.” Stone v. Powell, 428 U. S. 465, 492 (1976). But when courts admit illegally obtained evidence as well, they

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reward “manifest neglect if not an open defance of the prohi- bitions of the Constitution.” Weeks, 232 U. S., at 394.

Applying the exclusionary rule, the Utah Supreme Court correctly decided that Strieff's drugs must be excluded be- cause the offcer exploited his illegal stop to discover them. The offcer found the drugs only after learning of Strieff's traffc violation; and he learned of Strieff 's traffc violation only because he unlawfully stopped Strieff to check his driv- er's license.

The court also correctly rejected the State's argument that the offcer's discovery of a traffc warrant unspoiled the poisonous fruit. The State analogizes fnding the warrant to one of our earlier decisions, Wong Sun v. United States. There, an offcer illegally arrested a person who, days later, voluntarily returned to the station to confess to committing a crime. 371 U. S., at 491. Even though the person would not have confessed “but for the illegal actions of the police,” id., at 488, we noted that the police did not exploit their ille- gal arrest to obtain the confession, id., at 491. Because the confession was obtained by “means suffciently distinguish- able” from the constitutional violation, we held that it could be admitted into evidence. Id., at 488, 491. The State con- tends that the search incident to the warrant-arrest here is similarly distinguishable from the illegal stop.

But Wong Sun explains why Strieff's drugs must be ex- cluded. We reasoned that a Fourth Amendment violation may not color every investigation that follows but it certainly stains the actions of offcers who exploit the infraction. We distinguished evidence obtained by innocuous means from evidence obtained by exploiting misconduct after considering a variety of factors: whether a long time passed, whether there were “intervening circumstances,” and whether the purpose or fagrancy of the misconduct was “calculated” to procure the evidence. Brown v. Illinois, 422 U. S. 590, 603–605 (1975). These factors confrm that the offcer in this case discov- ered Strieff's drugs by exploiting his own illegal conduct.

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The offcer did not ask Strieff to volunteer his name only to fnd out, days later, that Strieff had a warrant against him. The offcer illegally stopped Strieff and immediately ran a warrant check. The offcer's discovery of a warrant was not some intervening surprise that he could not have anticipated. Utah lists over 180,000 misdemeanor warrants in its data- base, and at the time of the arrest, Salt Lake County had a “backlog of outstanding warrants” so large that it faced the “potential for civil liability.” See Dept. of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Survey of State Criminal History Informa- tion Systems, 2014 (2015) (Systems Survey) (Table 5a), online at https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffles1/ bjs/grants/249799.pdf (all Internet materials as last visited June 16, 2016); Inst. for Law and Policy Planning, Salt Lake County Criminal Justice System Assessment 6.7 (2004), online at http://www.slco.org/ cjac/resources/SaltLakeCJSAfinal.pdf. The officer's viola- tion was also calculated to procure evidence. His sole rea- son for stopping Strieff, he acknowledged, was investiga- tive—he wanted to discover whether drug activity was going on in the house Strieff had just exited. App. 17.

The warrant check, in other words, was not an “interven- ing circumstance” separating the stop from the search for drugs. It was part and parcel of the offcer's illegal “expedi- tion for evidence in the hope that something might turn up.” Brown, 422 U. S., at 605. Under our precedents, because the offcer found Strieff's drugs by exploiting his own consti- tutional violation, the drugs should be excluded.

III

A

The Court sees things differently. To the Court, the fact that a warrant gives an offcer cause to arrest a person sev- ers the connection between illegal policing and the resulting discovery of evidence. Ante, at 240–241. This is a remark- able proposition: The mere existence of a warrant not only gives an offcer legal cause to arrest and search a person, it

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also forgives an offcer who, with no knowledge of the war- rant at all, unlawfully stops that person on a whim or hunch. To explain its reasoning, the Court relies on Segura v. United States, 468 U. S. 796 (1984). There, federal agents applied for a warrant to search an apartment but illegally entered the apartment to secure it before the judge issued the warrant. Id., at 800–801. After receiving the warrant, the agents then searched the apartment for drugs. Id., at 801. The question before us was what to do with the evi- dence the agents then discovered. We declined to suppress it because “[t]he illegal entry into petitioners' apartment did not contribute in any way to discovery of the evidence seized under the warrant.” Id., at 815.

According to the majority, Segura involves facts “similar” to this case and “suggest[s]” that a valid warrant will clean up whatever illegal conduct uncovered it. Ante, at 240. It is diffcult to understand this interpretation. In Segura, the agents' illegal conduct in entering the apartment had nothing to do with their procurement of a search warrant. Here, the offcer's illegal conduct in stopping Strieff was essential to his discovery of an arrest warrant. Segura would be similar only if the agents used information they illegally obtained from the apartment to procure a search warrant or discover an arrest warrant. Precisely because that was not the case, the Court admitted the untainted evidence. 468 U. S., at 814.

The majority likewise misses the point when it calls the warrant check here a “ `negligibly burdensome precautio[n]' ” taken for the offcer's “safety.” Ante, at 241 (quoting Rodri- guez, 575 U. S., at 356). Remember, the offcer stopped Strieff without suspecting him of committing any crime. By his own account, the offcer did not fear Strieff. Moreover, the safety rationale we discussed in Rodriguez, an opinion about highway patrols, is conspicuously absent here. A warrant check on a highway “ensur[es] that vehicles on the road are operated safely and responsibly.” Id., at 355. We

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allow such checks during legal traffc stops because the legit- imacy of a person's driver's license has a “close connection to roadway safety.” Id., at 356. A warrant check of a pedes- trian on a sidewalk, “by contrast, is a measure aimed at `de- tect[ing] evidence of ordinary criminal wrongdoing.' ” Id., at 355 (quoting Indianapolis v. Edmond, 531 U. S. 32, 40–41 (2000)). Surely we would not allow offcers to warrant- check random joggers, dog walkers, and lemonade vendors just to ensure they pose no threat to anyone else.

The majority also posits that the offcer could not have exploited his illegal conduct because he did not violate the Fourth Amendment on purpose. Rather, he made “good- faith mistakes.” Ante, at 241. Never mind that the offcer's sole purpose was to fsh for evidence. The majority casts his unconstitutional actions as “negligent” and therefore in- capable of being deterred by the exclusionary rule. Ibid. But the Fourth Amendment does not tolerate an offcer's unreasonable searches and seizures just because he did not know any better. Even offcers prone to negligence can learn from courts that exclude illegally obtained evidence. Stone, 428 U. S., at 492. Indeed, they are perhaps the most in need of the education, whether by the judge's opinion, the prosecutor's future guidance, or an updated manual on crimi- nal procedure. If the offcers are in doubt about what the law requires, exclusion gives them an “incentive to err on the side of constitutional behavior.” United States v. John- son, 457 U. S. 537, 561 (1982).

B

Most striking about the Court's opinion is its insistence that the event here was “isolated,” with “no indication that this unlawful stop was part of any systemic or recurrent police misconduct.” Ante, at 242. Respectfully, nothing about this case is isolated.

Outstanding warrants are surprisingly common. When a person with a traffc ticket misses a fne payment or court

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appearance, a court will issue a warrant. See, e. g., Brennan Center for Justice, Criminal Justice Debt 23 (2010), online at https://www.brennancenter.org/sites/default/files/legacy/ Fees%20and%20Fines%20FINAL.pdf. When a person on probation drinks alcohol or breaks curfew, a court will issue a warrant. See, e. g., Human Rights Watch, Profiting From Probation 1, 51 (2014), online at https://www.hrw. org/report/2014/02/05/profting-probation/americas-offender- funded-probation-industry. The States and Federal Govern- ment maintain databases with over 7.8 million outstanding warrants, the vast majority of which appear to be for minor offenses. See Systems Survey (Table 5a). Even these sources may not track the “staggering” numbers of war- rants, “ `drawers and drawers' ” full, that many cities issue for traffc violations and ordinance infractions. Dept. of Jus- tice, Civil Rights Div., Investigation of the Ferguson Police Department 47, 55 (2015) (Ferguson Report), online at https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/opa/press-releases/ attachments/2015/03/04/ferguson_police_department_report. pdf. The county in this case has had a “backlog” of such warrants. See supra, at 247. The Department of Justice recently reported that in the town of Ferguson, Missouri, with a population of 21,000, 16,000 people had outstanding warrants against them. Ferguson Report, at 6, 55.

Justice Department investigations across the country have illustrated how these astounding numbers of warrants can be used by police to stop people without cause. In a single year in New Orleans, offcers “made nearly 60,000 arrests, of which about 20,000 were of people with outstanding traffc or misdemeanor warrants from neighboring parishes for such infractions as unpaid tickets.” Dept. of Justice, Civil Rights Div., Investigation of the New Orleans Police Department 29 (2011), online at https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/fles/ crt/ legacy/2011/03/17/nopd_report.pdf. In the St. Louis metropolitan area, offcers “routinely” stop people—on the street, at bus stops, or even in court—for no reason other than “an offcer's desire to check whether the subject had a

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municipal arrest warrant pending.” Ferguson Report, at 11, 17. In Newark, New Jersey, offcers stopped 52,235 pe- destrians within a 4-year period and ran warrant checks on 39,308 of them. Dept. of Justice, Civil Rights Div., Inves- tigation of the Newark Police Department 8, 19, n. 15 (2014), online at https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/fles/ crt/legacy/2014/07/22/newark_fndings_7-22-14.pdf. The Jus- tice Department analyzed these warrant-checked stops and reported that “approximately 93% of the stops would have been considered unsupported by articulated reasonable sus- picion.” Id., at 9, n. 7.

I do not doubt that most offcers act in “good faith” and do not set out to break the law. That does not mean these stops are “isolated instance[s] of negligence,” however. Ante, at 242. Many are the product of institutionalized training procedures. The New York City Police Depart- ment long trained offcers to, in the words of a District Judge, “stop and question frst, develop reasonable suspicion later.” Ligon v. New York, 925 F. Supp. 2d 478, 537–538 (SDNY), stay granted on other grounds, 736 F. 3d 118 (CA2 2013). The Utah Supreme Court described as “ `routine pro- cedure' or `common practice' ” the decision of Salt Lake City police offcers to run warrant checks on pedestrians they de- tained without reasonable suspicion. State v. Topanotes, 2003 UT 30, ¶2, 76 P. 3d 1159, 1160. In the related context of traffc stops, one widely followed police manual instructs offcers looking for drugs to “run at least a warrants check on all drivers you stop. Statistically, narcotics offenders are . . . more likely to fail to appear on simple citations, such as traffc or trespass violations, leading to the issuance of bench warrants. Discovery of an outstanding warrant gives you cause for an immediate custodial arrest and search of the suspect.” C. Remsberg, Tactics for Criminal Patrol 205–206 (1995); C. Epp et al., Pulled Over 23, 33–36 (2014).

The majority does not suggest what makes this case “iso- lated” from these and countless other examples. Nor does it offer guidance for how a defendant can prove that his ar-

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rest was the result of “widespread” misconduct. Surely it should not take a federal investigation of Salt Lake County before the Court would protect someone in Strieff's position.

IV

Writing only for myself, and drawing on my professional experiences, I would add that unlawful “stops” have severe consequences much greater than the inconvenience sug- gested by the name. This Court has given offcers an array of instruments to probe and examine you. When we con- done offcers' use of these devices without adequate cause, we give them reason to target pedestrians in an arbitrary manner. We also risk treating members of our communities as second-class citizens.

Although many Americans have been stopped for speeding or jaywalking, few may realize how degrading a stop can be when the offcer is looking for more. This Court has allowed an offcer to stop you for whatever reason he wants—so long as he can point to a pretextual justifcation after the fact. Whren v. United States, 517 U. S. 806, 813 (1996). That jus- tifcation must provide specifc reasons why the offcer sus- pected you were breaking the law, Terry, 392 U. S., at 21, but it may factor in your ethnicity, United States v. Brignoni- Ponce, 422 U. S. 873, 886–887 (1975), where you live, Adams v. Williams, 407 U. S. 143, 147 (1972), what you were wear- ing, United States v. Sokolow, 490 U. S. 1, 4–5 (1989), and how you behaved, Illinois v. Wardlow, 528 U. S. 119, 124–125 (2000). The offcer does not even need to know which law you might have broken so long as he can later point to any possible infraction—even one that is minor, unrelated, or am- biguous. Devenpeck v. Alford, 543 U. S. 146, 154–155 (2004); Heien v. North Carolina, 574 U. S. 54 (2014).

The indignity of the stop is not limited to an offcer telling you that you look like a criminal. See Epp, Pulled Over, at 5. The offcer may next ask for your “consent” to inspect

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your bag or purse without telling you that you can decline. See Florida v. Bostick, 501 U. S. 429, 438 (1991). Regard- less of your answer, he may order you to stand “helpless, perhaps facing a wall with [your] hands raised.” Terry, 392 U. S., at 17. If the offcer thinks you might be dangerous, he may then “frisk” you for weapons. This involves more than just a patdown. As onlookers pass by, the offcer may “ `feel with sensitive fngers every portion of [your] body. A thorough search [may] be made of [your] arms and armpits, waistline and back, the groin and area about the testicles, and entire surface of the legs down to the feet.' ” Id., at 17, n. 13.

The offcer's control over you does not end with the stop. If the offcer chooses, he may handcuff you and take you to jail for doing nothing more than speeding, jaywalking, or “driving [your] pickup truck . . . with [your] 3-year-old son and 5-year-old daughter . . . without [your] seatbelt fas- tened.” Atwater v. Lago Vista, 532 U. S. 318, 323–324 (2001). At the jail, he can fngerprint you, swab DNA from the inside of your mouth, and force you to “shower with a delousing agent” while you “lift [your] tongue, hold out [your] arms, turn around, and lift [your] genitals.” Florence v. Board of Chosen Freeholders of County of Burlington, 566 U. S. 318, 323 (2012); Maryland v. King, 569 U. S. 435, 465–466 (2013). Even if you are innocent, you will now join the 65 million Americans with an arrest record and ex- perience the “civil death” of discrimination by employers, landlords, and whoever else conducts a background check. Chin, The New Civil Death, 160 U. Pa. L. Rev. 1789, 1805 (2012); see J. Jacobs, The Eternal Criminal Record 33–51 (2015); Young & Petersilia, Keeping Track, 129 Harv. L. Rev. 1318, 1341–1357 (2016). And, of course, if you fail to pay bail or appear for court, a judge will issue a warrant to render you “arrestable on sight” in the future. A. Goffman, On the Run 196 (2014).

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This case involves a suspicionless stop, one in which the offcer initiated this chain of events without justifcation. As the Justice Department notes, supra, at 250–251, many innocent people are subjected to the humiliations of these unconstitutional searches. The white defendant in this case shows that anyone's dignity can be violated in this manner. See M. Gottschalk, Caught 119–138 (2015). But it is no se- cret that people of color are disproportionate victims of this type of scrutiny. See M. Alexander, The New Jim Crow 95– 136 (2010). For generations, black and brown parents have given their children “the talk”—instructing them never to run down the street; always keep your hands where they can be seen; do not even think of talking back to a stranger—all out of fear of how an offcer with a gun will react to them. See, e. g., W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (1903); J. Baldwin, The Fire Next Time (1963); T. Coates, Between the World and Me (2015).

By legitimizing the conduct that produces this double con- sciousness, this case tells everyone, white and black, guilty and innocent, that an offcer can verify your legal status at any time. It says that your body is subject to invasion while courts excuse the violation of your rights. It implies that you are not a citizen of a democracy but the subject of a carceral state, just waiting to be cataloged.

We must not pretend that the countless people who are routinely targeted by police are “isolated.” They are the canaries in the coal mine whose deaths, civil and literal, warn us that no one can breathe in this atmosphere. See L. Gui- nier & G. Torres, The Miner's Canary 274–283 (2002). They are the ones who recognize that unlawful police stops cor- rode all our civil liberties and threaten all our lives. Until their voices matter too, our justice system will continue to be anything but.

*

*

*

I dissent.

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Justice Kagan, with whom Justice Ginsburg joins,

dissenting.

If a police offcer stops a person on the street without rea- sonable suspicion, that seizure violates the Fourth Amend- ment. And if the offcer pats down the unlawfully detained individual and fnds drugs in his pocket, the State may not use the contraband as evidence in a criminal prosecution. That much is beyond dispute. The question here is whether the prohibition on admitting evidence dissolves if the offcer discovers, after making the stop but before fnding the drugs, that the person has an outstanding arrest warrant. Because that added wrinkle makes no difference under the Constitution, I respectfully dissent.

This Court has established a simple framework for deter- mining whether to exclude evidence obtained through a Fourth Amendment violation: Suppression is necessary when, but only when, its societal benefts outweigh its costs. See ante, at 237; Davis v. United States, 564 U. S. 229, 237 (2011). The exclusionary rule serves a crucial function—to deter unconstitutional police conduct. By barring the use of illegally obtained evidence, courts reduce the temptation for police offcers to skirt the Fourth Amendment's require- ments. See James v. Illinois, 493 U. S. 307, 319 (1990). But suppression of evidence also “exacts a heavy toll”: Its consequence in many cases is to release a criminal without just punishment. Davis, 564 U. S., at 237. Our decisions have thus endeavored to strike a sound balance between those two competing considerations—rejecting the “refex- ive” impulse to exclude evidence every time an offcer runs afoul of the Fourth Amendment, id., at 238, but insisting on suppression when it will lead to “appreciable deterrence” of police misconduct, Herring v. United States, 555 U. S. 135, 141 (2009).

This case thus requires the Court to determine whether excluding the fruits of Offcer Douglas Fackrell's unjustifed

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stop of Edward Strieff would signifcantly deter police from committing similar constitutional violations in the future. And as the Court states, that inquiry turns on application of the “attenuation doctrine,” ante, at 238—our effort to “mark the point” at which the discovery of evidence “become[s] so attenuated” from the police misconduct that the deterrent beneft of exclusion drops below its cost. United States v. Leon, 468 U. S. 897, 911 (1984). Since Brown v. Illinois, 422 U. S. 590, 604–605 (1975), three factors have guided that analysis. First, the closer the “temporal proximity” be- tween the unlawful act and the discovery of evidence, the greater the deterrent value of suppression. Id., at 603. Second, the more “purpose[ful]” or “fagran[t]” the police ille- gality, the clearer the necessity, and better the chance, of preventing similar misbehavior. Id., at 604. And third, the presence (or absence) of “intervening circumstances” makes a difference: The stronger the causal chain between the mis- conduct and the evidence, the more exclusion will curb future constitutional violations. Id., at 603–604. Here, as shown below, each of those considerations points toward suppres- sion: Nothing in Fackrell's discovery of an outstanding war- rant so attenuated the connection between his wrongful behavior and his detection of drugs as to diminish the exclu- sionary rule's deterrent benefts.

Start where the majority does: The temporal proximity fac- tor, it forthrightly admits, “favors suppressing the evidence.” Ante, at 239. After all, Fackrell's discovery of drugs came just minutes after the unconstitutional stop. And in prior decisions, this Court has made clear that only the lapse of “substantial time” between the two could favor admission. Kaupp v. Texas, 538 U. S. 626, 633 (2003) (per curiam); see, e. g., Brown, 422 U. S., at 604 (suppressing a confession when “less than two hours” separated it from an unlawful arrest). So the State, by all accounts, takes strike one.

Move on to the purposefulness of Fackrell's conduct, where the majority is less willing to see a problem for what it is.

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The majority chalks up Fackrell's Fourth Amendment viola- tion to a couple of innocent “mistakes.” Ante, at 241. But far from a Barney Fife-type mishap, Fackrell's seizure of Strieff was a calculated decision, taken with so little justif- cation that the State has never tried to defend its legality. At the suppression hearing, Fackrell acknowledged that the stop was designed for investigatory purposes—i. e., to “fnd out what was going on [in] the house” he had been watching, and to fgure out “what [Strieff] was doing there.” App. 17– 18. And Fackrell frankly admitted that he had no basis for his action except that Strieff “was coming out of the house.” Id., at 17. Plug in Fackrell's and Strieff's names, substitute “stop” for “arrest” and “reasonable suspicion” for “probable cause,” and this Court's decision in Brown perfectly de- scribes this case:

“[I]t is not disputed that [Fackrell stopped Strieff] with- [He] later testifed that [he] out [reasonable suspicion]. made the [stop] for the purpose of questioning [Strieff] as part of [his] investigation . . . . The illegality here . . . had a quality of purposefulness. The impropriety of the [stop] was obvious. [A]wareness of that fact was virtually conceded by [Fackrell] when [he] repeatedly acknowledged, in [his] testimony, that the purpose of [his] action was `for investigation': [Fackrell] embarked upon this expedition for evidence in the hope that some- thing might turn up.” 422 U. S., at 592, 605 (some in- ternal punctuation altered; footnote, citation, and paragraph break omitted).

In Brown, the Court held those facts to support suppres- sion—and they do here as well. Swing and a miss for strike two.

Finally, consider whether any intervening circumstance “br[oke] the causal chain” between the stop and the evidence. Ante, at 239. The notion of such a disrupting event comes from the tort law doctrine of proximate causation. See

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Bridge v. Phoenix Bond & Indemnity Co., 553 U. S. 639, 658– 659 (2008) (explaining that a party cannot “establish[ ] proxi- mate cause” when “an intervening cause break[s] the chain of causation between” the act and the injury); Kerr, Good Faith, New Law, and the Scope of the Exclusionary Rule, 99 Geo. L. J. 1077, 1099 (2011) (Fourth Amendment attenuation analysis “looks to whether the constitutional violation was the proximate cause of the discovery of the evidence”). And as in the tort context, a circumstance counts as intervening only when it is unforeseeable—not when it can be seen com- ing from miles away. See W. Keeton, D. Dobbs, B. Kee- ton, & D. Owen, Prosser and Keeton on Law of Torts 312 (5th ed. 1984). For rather than breaking the causal chain, predictable effects (e. g., X leads naturally to Y leads natu- rally to Z) are its very links.

And Fackrell's discovery of an arrest warrant—the only event the majority thinks intervened—was an eminently foreseeable consequence of stopping Strieff. As Fackrell testifed, checking for outstanding warrants during a stop is the “normal” practice of South Salt Lake City police. App. 18; see also State v. Topanotes, 2003 UT 30, ¶2, 76 P. 3d 1159, 1160 (describing a warrant check as “routine procedure” and “common practice” in Salt Lake City). In other words, the department's standard detention procedures—stop, ask for identifcation, run a check—are partly designed to fnd out- standing warrants. And fnd them they will, given the stag- gering number of such warrants on the books. See gener- ally ante, at 249–250 (Sotomayor, J., dissenting). To take just a few examples: The State of California has 2.5 million outstanding arrest warrants (a number corresponding to about 9% of its adult population); Pennsylvania (with a popu- lation of about 12.8 million) contributes 1.4 million more; and New York City (population 8.4 million) adds another 1.2 mil- lion. See Reply Brief 8; Associated Press, Pa. Database, NBC News (Apr. 8, 2007), online at http://www.nbcnews.com/ id/18013262/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts/t/pa-database-

Cite as: 579 U. S. 232 (2016)

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Kagan, J., dissenting

million-warrants-unserved/#.WejgRdVSxaQ (as last visited June 17, 2016); N. Y. Times, Oct. 8, 2015, p. A24.1 So out- standing warrants do not appear as bolts from the blue. They are the run-of-the-mill results of police stops—what offcers look for when they run a routine check of a person's identifcation and what they know will turn up with fair reg- ularity. In short, they are nothing like what intervening circumstances are supposed to be.2 Strike three.

The majority's misapplication of Brown's three-part in- quiry creates unfortunate incentives for the police—indeed, practically invites them to do what Fackrell did here. Con- sider an offcer who, like Fackrell, wishes to stop someone for investigative reasons, but does not have what a court would view as reasonable suspicion. If the offcer believes that any evidence he discovers will be inadmissible, he is likely to think the unlawful stop not worth making—pre- cisely the deterrence the exclusionary rule is meant to achieve. But when he is told of today's decision? Now the offcer knows that the stop may well yield admissible evi-

1 What is more, outstanding arrest warrants are not distributed evenly across the population. To the contrary, they are concentrated in cities, towns, and neighborhoods where stops are most likely to occur—and so the odds of any given stop revealing a warrant are even higher than the above numbers indicate. One study found, for example, that Cincinnati, Ohio had over 100,000 outstanding warrants with only 300,000 residents. See Helland & Tabarrok, The Fugitive: Evidence on Public Versus Private Law Enforcement From Bail Jumping, 47 J. Law & Econ. 93, 98 (2004). And as Justice Sotomayor notes, 16,000 of the 21,000 people residing in the town of Ferguson, Missouri have outstanding warrants. See ante, at 250.

2 The majority relies on Segura v. United States, 468 U. S. 796 (1984), to reach the opposite conclusion, see ante, at 240–241, but that decision lacks any relevance to this case. The Court there held that the Fourth Amend- ment violation at issue “did not contribute in any way” to the police's subsequent procurement of a warrant and discovery of contraband. 468 U. S., at 815. So the Court had no occasion to consider the question here: What happens when an unconstitutional act in fact leads to a warrant which then leads to evidence?

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Kagan, J., dissenting

dence: So long as the target is one of the many millions of people in this country with an outstanding arrest warrant, anything the offcer fnds in a search is fair game for use in a criminal prosecution. The offcer's incentive to violate the Constitution thus increases: From here on, he sees potential advantage in stopping individuals without reasonable suspi- cion—exactly the temptation the exclusionary rule is sup- posed to remove. Because the majority thus places Fourth Amendment protections at risk, I respectfully dissent.