VICTORY! Pennsylvania Supreme Court Unanimously Protects Landowners From Warrantless Spying

In a landmark win for property rights, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court unanimously struck down a pair of statutes that authorized state game wardens to enter and surveil private land without a warrant. 

The decision, Punxsutawney Hunting Club v. Pennsylvania Game Commission, held that Article I, Section 8 of the Pennsylvania Constitution requires state officials to obtain a warrant to search land that is “posted, fenced, or otherwise marked to exclude intruders.” This victory protects not only IJ’s clients—two private hunting clubs—but over 21 million additional acres of private land across Pennsylvania.

The case arose after a state game warden spent years intruding on two neighboring properties in northern Pennsylvania: Punxsutawney Hunting Club and Pitch Pine Hunting Club. Both are historic clubs where generations of members have come to hunt, vacation, and enjoy the great outdoors with close friends and family. The clubs aim to provide a private place—a sanctuary—from the hustle and bustle of daily life. And they are visibly marked with “no trespassing” signs and purple paint (which signals “no public entry” under state law) to prevent intrusion.

Despite these clear demands for privacy, the game warden entered the clubs at least 22 times, roamed around for hours in secret, and repeatedly stopped members while they were hunting or even just using private trails to check whether they were following hunting laws. In one instance, the warden even put a surveillance camera on one of the properties that stayed up for 78 days and took hundreds of photos. All without the clubs’ consent, their members’ knowledge, or a warrant from a judge.

To his credit, the game warden relied on a pair of state statutes that allowed him to “enter any private property, posted or otherwise.” And to the legislature’s credit, those statutes did not spring from nothing. They were based on an old rule called the “open fields doctrine.” 

Over a century ago, the U.S. Supreme Court mistakenly held that so-called open fields—all land not immediately near a house—get no Fourth Amendment protection from warrantless searches. And in 2007, in a case called Russo, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court held the same under the state constitution.

All of that put the hunting clubs in a tough spot. State statutes and a century of precedent held that the game warden’s warrantless intrusions were justified. But, with IJ’s representation, the clubs stood up and filed a lawsuit anyway. 

Their point was simple: Russo was wrong and should be overruled. Article I, Section 8 of the Pennsylvania Constitution, like over a dozen other state constitutions and unlike the Fourth Amendment, explicitly protects “possessions” from warrantless searches. And land is a possession.

The hunting clubs had good reason to be hopeful. In 2024, IJ secured a major victory in a nearly identical challenge to game wardens’ warrantless spying in Tennessee. There, the state court of appeals held that private land is a possession and refused to apply the open fields doctrine because warrantless searches are “a disturbing assertion of power on behalf of the government that stands contrary to the foundations of the search protections against arbitrary governmental intrusions in the American legal tradition.” We designed the Pennsylvania lawsuit to achieve the same result.

And it did. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court unanimously held that “slavish adherence to our decision in Russo must give way to the greater privacy and property protections afforded under Article I, Section 8 of our state charter.” Private land that is posted, fenced, or otherwise marked to exclude intruders is a possession, and therefore game wardens and all other state officials must obtain a warrant before searching it. 

That not only empowers all landowners in Pennsylvania to protect their property—it sends a message to officials across the country who still think they can treat private land like public property: Watch your step. Because you can be sure IJ is watching.