No Trespassing Signs and the 4th Amendment

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated.

Does posting a 'No Trespassing' sign keep police and other government agents from entering your private property? The courts have looked at this question, and the short answer is No! A 'No Trespassing' sign or even multiple signs are not sufficient to revoke the right of someone to approach your front door.

In Florida v. Jardines, a case decided by the US Supreme Court in 2013, Justice Scalia provides an explanation:

Scalia begins by discussing the important role that curtilage plays in protecting peoples’ homes from unreasonable searches:

When it comes to the Fourth Amendment, the home is first among equals. At the Amendment’s very core stands the right of a man to retreat into his own home and there be free from unreasonable governmental intrusion.… This right would be of little practical value if the State’s agents could stand in a home’s porch or side garden and trawl for evidence with impunity; the right to retreat would be significantly diminished if the police could enter a man’s property to observe his repose from just outside the front window.

We therefore regard the area immediately surrounding and associated with the home—what our cases call the curtilage—as part of the home itself for Fourth Amendment purposes.…

While the boundaries of the curtilage are generally clearly marked, the conception defining the curtilage is at any rate familiar enough that it is easily understood from our daily experience.… The front porch is the classic exemplar of an area adjacent to the home and to which the activity of home life extends.…

While law enforcement officers need not shield their eyes when passing by the home on public thoroughfares, … an officer’s leave to gather information is sharply circumscribed when he steps off those thoroughfares and enters the Fourth Amendment’s protected areas.

The Implied License to Enter

Does this mean police officers may never enter the curtilage surrounding a home? Certainly not. Scalia goes on to say:

A license [to enter] may be implied from the habits of the country, notwithstanding the strict rule of the English common law as to entry upon a close.… We have accordingly recognized that the knocker on the front door is treated as an invitation or license to attempt an entry, justifying ingress to the home by solicitors, hawkers and peddlers of all kinds…. This implicit license typically permits the visitor to approach the home by the front path, knock promptly, wait briefly to be received, and then (absent invitation to linger longer) leave. Complying with the terms of that traditional invitation does not require fine-grained legal knowledge; it is generally managed without incident by the Nation’s Girl Scouts and trick-or-treaters. Thus, a police officer not armed with a warrant may approach a home and knock, precisely because that is no more than any private citizen might do.

In another case, State of North Carolina v. Smith, the court stated We are not aware of any court that has ruled that a sign alone was sufficient to revoke the implied license to approach. See, e.g., United States v. Bearden (“knock and talk” upheld where officers entered property through open driveway gate marked with “No Trespassing” signs); United States v. Denim (six “No Trespassing” signs not sufficient to revoke implied license).  

In United States of America v. Carloss, the court acknowledged that not only were there a total of four “no trespassing” signs, one of them was posted in place of “the knocker on the front door” that, according to Justice Scalia, “is treated as an invitation or license to attempt an entry.” Nevertheless, the majority held that:

Under the circumstances presented here, those “No Trespassing” signs would not have conveyed to an objective officer that he could not approach the house and knock on the front door seeking to have a consensual conversation with the occupants.

So, what can you do?

'No Trespassing' signs are important, but they must be combined with closed gates and fences. You must create a reasonable expectation of privacy that goes beyond a mere sign and shows your specific intent to restrict access to your private property.

In Bainter v. State, 2014 Fla. App. LEXIS 4607 (Fla. 5th DCA March 28, 2014) the court found that:

The undisputed facts are that the property where the search and seizure took place was the defendant’s home. The home was located on a large piece of property that had a few acres that were cleared. The property was surrounded by a barbed-wire fence, had a chain-link push gate at the entry to the dirt driveway, and had “no trespassing” signs posted at the entry to the driveway. The police traveled to the defendant’s address to do a knock and talk after receiving an anonymous tip that the property owner might be growing cannabis. The police drove down the dirt driveway through the open gate, parked the car near the home, exited the car, walked about forty yards to the front porch, and knocked on the front door. The knock and talk resulted in the eventual seizure of cannabis. The police admitted that they did not have consent to enter the property and they did not have a warrant. They also did not see anything in plain view that was illegal.
    . . .
Here, the posting of the signs and the fencing of the entire property, including a push gate at the entrance to the driveway, exhibited the defendant’s actual, subjective expectation of privacy, and we conclude that society is prepared to recognize same as being reasonable. Neither the fact that the gate was open, nor that occasional friends or service providers come onto the property, negate that expectation of privacy.

The National Association of Rural Land Owners (WE SPECIALIZE IN SELF-DEFENSE STRATEGIES AGAINST GOVERNMENT ABUSE AND HARASSMENT FOR THE RURAL LANDOWNER) offers some insight into protecting your property against trespass by government agents. 

They provide notices to be posted that MAY aid in revoking the implied license for government agents to enter your private property.


What you must NEVER DO however is post signs that state 'Trespassers Will Be Shot' or similar "joke" type 'No Trespassing' signs. This type of sign turns your expectation of privacy into a joke and removes any potential legal protection under trespassing laws because society is generally NOT prepared to recognize shooting trespassers as being reasonable. Furthermore, such signs may create a circumstance where government agents can enter your property (where they would otherwise be restricted) based on your communicated threat to the public.