Amanda rents a single-family house from Bev and Bert, where she lives with her fiancé, two dogs, and children from a prior relationship. Amanda is a private person—she actually moved back to her hometown of Orange City for more privacy. Because Amanda is pregnant and her fiancé is often away from home as a truck driver, she is even more opposed to having strangers in her home.
Orange City, Iowa, has a rental inspection law that forces landlords and tenants to open their properties and homes to submit to intrusive inspections. This ordinance allows the government to enter the most intimate confines of tenants’ homes— including bedrooms, bathrooms, kitchens and closets—in search of housing code violations, even when landlords and tenants object.…
