An unusual civil rights case has been filed in federal court involving a state agency that affixed a camera to a bear to catch residents feeding it.
The case may sound comical, but legal experts say it will be an important test about how far the government can go in conducting surveillance of citizens without a warrant.
“Turning wild animals into roving surveillance tools violates our fundamental right to be secure on our property. It’s outrageous government overreach,” Robert Frommer, senior attorney at the Institute for Justice told The Epoch Times.
Frommer is also the director of the organization’s Fourth Amendment Project.
The Fourth Amendment is part of the U.S. Constitution that protects Americans against unreasonable search and seizure by the government.
Carol and Mark Brault, the couple targeted by the warrantless bear cam, own 118 acres of land in the town of West Hartland.
Frommer said while the century-old “Open Field Doctrine” established by the U.S. Supreme Court has permitted the government onto large parcels of land without a warrant, he said he doesn’t believe it was intended to protect the government from “turning bears into agents of the government.”
“Once you slap a camera on a bear with plans to use images captured by the bear, it’s an agent of the government,” he said, “and that bear could go anywhere. It might come right up to your window—there’s no way for the officers to control that bear,” he said.
According to the suit, the Connecticut Department of Economical and Environmental Protect (DEEP) caught a bear and then put a camera on it in order to catch the Braults violating a cease-and-desist order the town of West Hartland issued to stop them from feeding bears.
It is against the town ordinance to feed bears in West Hartland.
The Braults, which designated their large tract of land a nonprofit wildlife sanctuary, were feeding them to attract them so they could be photographed.
It remains unclear why a state agency got involved in a town issue in the bear controversy.
In its complaint, the town admitted it used footage captured by a camera the department put on a bear they tagged as “Bear 119” and released near the Braults’ property.
A department spokesman Paul Copleman told The Epoch Times that it has “no comment on active litigation” in response to inquiries about the unusual case.
DEEP is the same agency that recently campaigned for a bill that would create a bear hunt by lottery in Connecticut. Lawmakers abandoned the bill after a huge outcry from the public against it.
However, it recently passed a modified version of the bill that allows both the agency and homeowners to kill bears that pose a threat or, as the law is written, are perceived to potentially pose a threat.
The law also established a statewide ban on “intentional feeding of bears” in the New England state.
Connecticut, like most northeast states, is populated by black bears. According to the North American Bear Center, they rarely hunt.
They eat mostly berries, nuts, and plants and according to the center, typically only eat meat if they happen to come across an already dead animal.
Young men “are 167 times more likely to kill someone than a black bear,” the center said in a statement.
“Most attacks by black bears are defensive reactions to a person who is too close, which is an easy situation to avoid.”
As part of their lawsuit, the Braults produced their own camera footage showing that the DEEP-camera outfitted bear came within 200 yards of their property.
To Frommer, that is a clear indication the government was spying on the Braults and violating the open-field doctrine.
The case has caught the attention of several civil rights organizations and constitutionalists.
Foundation for Economic Education, which is handling several cases involving the government’s use of drones to conduct surveillance of private property without a warrant, said that putting a camera on a bear known to frequent private property is no different than placing a hidden camera on private property without the owner’s permission.
Government warrantless searches for outdoor areas have become a growing issue for lawmakers.
Last year, Iowa Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds signed a law that overturned a state ban on warrantless police search of household garbage put out on the street for pickup by city trash collectors.
The open-field doctrine has been used to catch landowners poaching and illegally hunting on their property. In Tennessee, a landowner was recently fined after being caught on camera secretly placed on his land by state government officials without a warrant.
Several states have passed laws against outdoor warrantless searches including Mississippi, Montana, New York, Oregon, Vermont, and Florida.
In their lawsuit against the DEEP, the Braults alleged that the agency violated their Fourth Amendment rights and trespassed on their property by way of a bear.
They have asked the court to order all footage captured by the camera to be destroyed and that the camera be removed from the bear.
Neither the town of West Hartland nor its attorneys responded to inquiries from The Epoch Times.
There are around 750,000 black bears in the United States. They have an average lifespan of 21 years but rarely make it past the age of 3.
They mostly die of starvation or are shot, according to the North American Bear Center.
According to the Humane Society of the United States, about 50,000 bears are killed a year as part of government-sanctioned trophy hunting, which exists in 33 states.
