DENVER—Michael Mendenhall’s townhome was searched and his precious possession seized after the police used secondhand information to get a search warrant. He was also forced to spend a night in jail. The testimony of a single witness was passed like a game of “telephone” from a police officer, to a detective, and then to a judge. Days after his arrest, the charges against Michael were dropped. However, the police continue to hold onto the commemorative baseball bat they seized with the warrant.

Michael is challenging that warrant with a lawsuit brought first by the Civil Rights Clinic at the University of Denver and now with the Institute for Justice (IJ), a national nonprofit public interest law firm. Today, people who have been harmed by unsupported warrants and civil rights organizations announced their support for Michael’s case, which is currently at the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

“The Fourth Amendment must be enforced in its entirety. The Fourth Amendment bans reliance on second-hand information but over the last sixty-five years the courts have read that requirement out of the Constitution,” said IJ Senior Attorney Anya Bidwell. “We’re fighting to bring back the original understanding of this very important protection.”

• WATCH a video about the case.

The Fourth Amendment says that warrants must be “supported by oath or affirmation.” For much of American history, that meant requiring firsthand testimony taken under oath. But in Jones v. United States (1960), the Supreme Court read that section out of the Fourth Amendment’s text.

The problem with no longer requiring firsthand testimony is apparent in Michael’s case. While working late one evening in 2023, Michael and his friend heard screams coming from the front stoop. Michael grabbed a commemorative baseball bat and they opened the door. After less than a minute of argument, the strange man who had been sitting on the stoop backed away and Michael shut the door.

A short while later, police knocked on the door and arrested Michael, without even asking for his side of the story. While Michael was being held in a squad car, an officer called a police detective and relayed the allegations. That detective in turn used this secondhand account to apply for a warrant to enter the townhouse and search for the baseball bat.

After police got the warrant, they entered the home and seized the bat. Michael was taken to jail and charged with felony menacing. Michael bailed out the next morning. Given the flimsy testimony of Michael’s accuser, charges were dropped less than a week later. Michael still has not had the bat returned to him, which is from the 2021 All-Star Game and is signed by players.

“It’s hard for me to imagine that what happened to me, and what happens to countless Americans on a regular basis is something the founders would be ok with,” said Michael “Our country was founded on the idea that we should be safe in our homes. That’s pretty much what we fought the revolution over. I hope this case brings attention to how we’re no longer enforcing one of the most important aspects of the constitution.”

Michael’s lawsuit has attracted an unusual amount of support for an appeals court case because it squarely challenges a constitutional problem that is often in the background of more notable abuses of civil rights.

Police acquired warrants to raid the homes of Anjanette Young and Kenneth Walker based on unreliable information from informants. Anjanette was woken in the middle of the night and handcuffed naked in her home by Chicago police. Kenneth’s girlfriend, Breonna Taylor, was killed during the Louisville police raid on their home. In both cases, the cities settled their civil rights lawsuits. Their joint amicus brief discusses how a return to the original meaning of the Fourth Amendment could have prevented these tragedies.

Other supportive briefs include one from civil rights lawyers who discuss the difficulty of litigating cases; another from University of Denver Law Professor Laurent Sacharoff and other scholars revealing the history of the oath requirement; and a brief from the National Police Accountability Project and the Law Enforcement Action Partnership on best practices for acquiring warrants.

“By deleting a clause from the Fourth Amendment’s text, the Supreme Court removed a powerful safeguard from our Constitution,” said IJ Senior Attorney Patrick Jaicomo. “Through this and other modern nips and tucks, the courts have transformed the warrant process from a meaningful check on government abuse to a way of laundering accountability.”

The Institute for Justice works to protect the U.S. Constitution through its Project on the Fourth Amendment and Project on Immunity and Accountability. IJ is representing families in Georgia, Indiana, and North Carolina whose homes were wrongly raided. IJ is also suing on behalf of a woman wrongly arrested in Florida.