Dow Chemical Co. v. United States Case Brief Summary | Law Case Explained

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Dow Chemical Co. v. United States, 476 U.S. 227 (1986)
The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits unreasonable searches, or in other words, governmental intrusion into an area in which someone has a reasonable expectation of privacy. Dow Chemical Company versus United States analyzed whether a government investigator’s aerial photography of a manufacturing plant violated the Fourth Amendment.
Dow Chemical Company operated a 2,000-acre chemical-manufacturing plant in Michigan. The plant complex consisted of several buildings, plus open areas that contained exposed manufacturing equipment. Dow secured the complex so that the public couldn’t see the equipment from the ground. But the equipment was still visible from the air.
In 1978, officials from the United States Environmental Protection Agency inspected two of the plant’s buildings to assess Dow’s compliance with the federal Clean Air Act. The agency requested a second inspection, but Dow refused. So, without obtaining an administrative search warrant, the agency hired a commercial aerial photographer to fly over the plant complex in navigable airspace and take pictures of the complex using a standard aerial-mapping camera. The resulting photographs showed outlines of the complex’s buildings and equipment and could be enlarged to show small details.
When Dow learned about the photography, Dow sued the agency in federal court in Michigan. Dow asserted that the agency had exceeded the scope of its investigatory authority under the Clean Air Act and violated the Fourth Amendment by taking the photographs. The district court agreed, concluding that the agency didn’t have authority to take the photographs and that taking the photographs was an impermissible search. The court found that Dow had a reasonable expectation of privacy in the plant complex’s open areas. The Sixth Circuit reversed, holding that the agency had acted within the scope of its authority and that Dow’s expectation of privacy wasn’t reasonable. The United States Supreme Court granted cert.
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