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NOTICE: This opinion is subject to formal revision before publication in the
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SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
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No. 91-6516
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EDWARD SOLDAL, et ux., PETITIONERS v. COOK
COUNTY, ILLINOIS et al.
on writ of certiorari to the united states court
of appeals for the seventh circuit
[December 8, 1992]

  Justice White delivered the opinion of the Court.
                            I
  Edward Soldal and his family resided in their trailer
home, which was located on a rented lot in the Willoway
Terrace mobile home park in Elk Grove, Illinois.  In May,
1987, Terrace Properties, the owner of the park, and
Margaret Hale, its manager, filed an eviction proceeding
against the Soldals in an Illinois state court.  Under the
Illinois Forcible Entry and Detainer Act, Ill. Rev. Stat.,
ch. 110, -9-101 et seq. (1991), a tenant cannot be dispos-
sessed absent a judgment of eviction.  The suit was
dismissed on June 2, 1987.  A few months later, in
August, 1987, the owner brought a second proceeding of
eviction, claiming nonpayment of rent.  The case was set
for trial on September 22, 1987.
  Rather than await judgment in their favor, Terrace
Properties and Hale, contrary to Illinois law, chose to
evict the Soldals forcibly two weeks prior to the scheduled
hearing.  On September 4, Hale notified the Cook
County's Sheriff's Department that she was going to
remove the trailer home from the park, and requested the
presence of sheriff deputies to forestall any possible
resistance.  Later that day, two Terrace Properties em-
ployees arrived at the Soldals' home accompanied by Cook
County Deputy Sheriff O'Neil.  The employees proceeded
to wrench the sewer and water connections off the side
of the trailer home, disconnect the phone, tear off the
trailer's canopy and skirting, and hook the home to a
tractor.  Meanwhile, O'Neil explained to Edward Soldal
that -`he was there to see that [Soldal] didn't interfere
with [Willoway's] work.'- Brief for Petitioner 6.
  By this time, two more deputy sheriffs had arrived at
the scene and Soldal told them that he wished to file a
complaint for criminal trespass.  They referred him
to deputy Lieutenant Jones, who was in Hale's office.
Jones asked Soldal to wait outside while he remained
closeted with Hale and other Terrace Properties employees
for over twenty minutes.  After talking to a district
attorney and making Soldal wait another half hour, Jones
told Soldal that he would not accept a complaint because
-`it was between the landlord and the tenant . . . [and]
they were going to go ahead and continue to move out the
trailer.'- Id., at 8.  Throughout this period, the deputy
sheriffs knew that Terrace Properties did not have an
eviction order and that its actions were unlawful.  Eventu-
ally, and in the presence of an additional two deputy
sheriffs, the Willoway workers pulled the trailer free of
its moorings and towed it onto the street.  Later, it was
hauled to a neighboring property.
  On September 9, the state judge assigned to the pending
eviction proceedings ruled that the eviction had been
unauthorized and ordered Terrace Properties to return the
Soldals' home to the lot.  The home, however, was badly
damaged.    The Soldals brought this action under 42
U. S. C. 1983, alleging a violation of their rights under
the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments.  They claimed
that Terrace Properties and Hale had conspired with Cook
County deputy sheriffs to unreasonably seize and remove
the Soldals' trailer home.  The District Judge granted
defendants' motion for summary judgment on the grounds
that the Soldals had failed to adduce any evidence to
support their conspiracy theory and, therefore, the exis-
tence of state action necessary under 1983.
  The Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, construing
the facts in petitioners' favor, accepted their contention
that there was state action.  However, it went on to hold
that the removal of the Soldals' trailer did not constitute
a seizure for purposes of the Fourth Amendment or a
deprivation of due process for purposes of the Fourteenth.
  On rehearing, a majority of the Seventh Circuit, sitting
en banc, reaffirmed the panel decision.  Acknowledging
that what had occurred was a -seizure- in the literal
sense of the word, the court reasoned that, because it was
not made in the course of public law enforcement and
because it did not invade the Soldals' privacy, it was not
a seizure as contemplated by the Fourth Amendment.  942
F. 2d 1073, 1076 (1991).  Interpreting prior cases of this
Court, the Seventh Circuit concluded that, absent interfer-
ence with privacy or liberty, a -pure deprivation of prop-
erty- is not cognizable under the Fourth Amendment.  Id.,
at 1078-1079.  Rather, petitioners' property interests were
protected only by the due process clauses of the Fifth and
Fourteenth Amendments.
  We granted certiorari to consider whether the seizure
and removal of the Soldals' trailer home implicated their
Fourth Amendment rights, 503 U. S. - (1992), and now
reverse.
                           II
  The Fourth Amendment, made applicable to the States
by the Fourteenth, Ker v. California, 374 U. S. 23, 30
(1963), provides in pertinent part that the -right of the
people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and
effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall
not be violated . . . .-
  A -seizure- of property, we have explained, occurs when
-there is some meaningful interference with an
individual's possessory interests in that property.-  United
States v. Jacobsen, 466 U. S. 109, 113 (1984).  In addition,
we have emphasized that -at the very core- of the Fourth
Amendment -stands the right of a man to retreat into his
own home.-  Silverman v. United States, 365 U. S. 505,
511 (1961).  See also Oliver v. United States, 466 U. S.
170, 178-179 (1984); Wyman v. James, 400 U. S. 309, 316
(1971); Payton v. New York, 445 U. S. 573, 601 (1980).
  As a result of the state action in this case, the Soldals'
domicile was not only seized, it literally was carried away,
giving new meaning to the term -mobile home.-  We fail
to see how being unceremoniously dispossessed of one's
home in the manner alleged to have occurred here can be
viewed as anything but a seizure invoking the protection
of the Fourth Amendment.  Whether the Amendment was
in fact violated is, of course, a different question that
requires determining if the seizure was reasonable.  That
inquiry entails the weighing of various factors and is not
before us.
  The Court of Appeals recognized that there had been a
seizure, but concluded that it was a seizure only in a
-technical- sense, not within the meaning of the Fourth
Amendment.  This conclusion followed from a narrow
reading of the Amendment, which the court construed to
safeguard only privacy and liberty interests while leaving
unprotected possessory interests where neither privacy nor
liberty was at stake.  Otherwise, the court said,
-a constitutional provision enacted two centuries ago
[would] make every repossession and eviction with
police assistance actionable under - of all things -
the Fourth Amendment[, which] would both trivialize
the amendment and gratuitously shift a large body of
routine commercial litigation from the state courts to
the federal courts.  That trivializing, this shift, can
be prevented by recognizing the difference between
possessory and privacy interests.-  942 F. 2d, at 1077.
Because the officers had not entered Soldal's house,
rummaged through his possessions, or, in the Court of
Appeals' view, interfered with his liberty in the course of
the eviction, the Fourth Amendment offered no protection
against the -grave deprivation- of property that had
occurred.  Ibid.
  We do not agree with this interpretation of the Fourth
Amendment.  The Amendment protects the people from
unreasonable searches and seizures of -their persons,
houses, papers, and effects.-  This language surely cuts
against the novel holding below, and our cases unmistak-
ably hold that the Amendment protects property as well
as privacy.  This much was made clear in Jacobsen,
supra, where we explained that the first clause of the
Fourth Amendment
-protects two types of expectations, one involving
`searches,' the other `seizures.'  A `search' occurs when
an expectation of privacy that society is prepared to
consider reasonable is infringed.  A `seizure' of prop-
erty occurs where there is some meaningful interfer-
ence with an individual's possessory interests in that
property.-  466 U. S., at 113.
See also id., at 120; Horton v. California, 496 U. S. 128,
133 (1990); Arizona v. Hicks, 480 U. S. 321, 328 (1987);
Maryland v. Macon, 472 U. S. 463, 469 (1985); Texas v.
Brown, 460 U. S. 730, 747-748 (1983) (Stevens, J.,
concurring in judgment); United States v. Salvucci, 448
U. S. 83, 91, n. 6 (1980).  Thus, having concluded that
chemical testing of powder found in a package did not
compromise its owner's privacy, the Court in Jacobsen did
not put an end to its inquiry, as would be required under
the view adopted by the Court of Appeals and advocated
by respondents.  Instead, adhering to the teachings of
United States v. Place, 462 U. S. 696 (1983), it went on
to determine whether the invasion of the owners' -posses-
sory interests- occasioned by the destruction of the powder
was reasonable under the Fourth Amendment.  Jacobsen,
466 U. S., at 124-125.  In Place, although we found that
subjecting luggage to a -dog sniff- did not constitute a
search for Fourth Amendment purposes because it did not
compromise any privacy interest, taking custody of Place's
suitcase was deemed an unlawful seizure for it unreason-
ably infringed -the suspect's possessory interest in his
luggage.-  462 U. S., at 708.  Although lacking a privacy
component, the property rights in both instances nonethe-
less were not disregarded, but rather were afforded Fourth
Amendment protection.
  Respondents rely principally on precedents such as Katz
v. United States, 389 U. S. 347 (1967), Warden, Maryland
Penitentiary v. Hayden, 387 U. S. 294 (1967), and
Cardwell v. Lewis, 417 U. S. 583 (1974), to demonstrate
that the Fourth Amendment is only marginally concerned
with property rights.  But the message of those cases is
that property rights are not the sole measure of Fourth
Amendment violations.  The Warden opinion thus ob-
served, citing Jones v. United States, 362 U. S. 257 (1960)
and Silverman, that the -principal- object of the Amend-
ment is the protection of privacy rather than property and
that -this shift in emphasis from property to privacy has
come about through a subtle interplay of substantive and
procedural reform.-  387 U. S., at 304.  There was no
suggestion that this shift in emphasis had snuffed out the
previously recognized protection for property under the
Fourth Amendment.  Katz, in declaring violative of the
Fourth Amendment the unwarranted overhearing of a
telephone booth conversation, effectively ended any linger-
ing notions that the protection of privacy depended on
trespass into a protected area.  In the course of its
decision, the Katz Court stated that the Fourth Amend-
ment can neither be translated into a provision dealing
with constitutionally protected areas nor into a general
constitutional right to privacy.  The Amendment, the
Court said, protects individual privacy against certain
kinds of governmental intrusion, -but its protections go
further, and often have nothing to do with privacy at all.-
389 U. S., at 350.
  As for Cardwell, a plurality of this Court held in that
case that the Fourth Amendment did not bar the use in
evidence of paint scrapings taken from and tire treads
observed on the defendant's automobile, which had been
seized in a parking lot and towed to a police lockup.
Gathering this evidence was not deemed to be a search,
for nothing from the interior of the car and -no personal
effects, which the Fourth Amendment traditionally has
been deemed to protect- were searched or seized.
Cardwell, 417 U. S., at 591 (opinion of Blackmun, J.).
No meaningful privacy rights were invaded.  But this left
the argument, pressed by the dissent, that the evidence
gathered was the product of a warrantless and hence
illegal seizure of the car from the parking lot where the
defendant had left it.  However, the plurality was of the
view that, because under the circumstances of the case
there was probable cause to seize the car as an instru-
mentality of the crime, Fourth Amendment precedent
permitted the seizure without a warrant.  Id., at 593.
Thus, both the plurality and dissenting Justices considered
defendant's auto deserving of Fourth Amendment protec-
tion even though privacy interests were not at stake.
They differed only in the degree of protection that the
Amendment demanded.
  The Court of Appeals appeared to find more specific
support for confining the protection of the Fourth Amend-
ment to privacy interests in our decision in Hudson v.
Palmer, 468 U. S. 517 (1984).  There, a state prison
inmate sued, claiming that prison guards had entered his
cell without consent and had seized and destroyed some
of his personal effects.  We ruled that an inmate, because
of his status, enjoyed neither a right to privacy in his cell
nor protection against unreasonable seizures of his per-
sonal effects.  Id., at 526-528, and n. 8; id., at 538
(O'Connor, J., concurring).  Whatever else the case held,
it is of limited usefulness outside the prison context with
respect to the coverage of the Fourth Amendment.
  We thus are unconvinced that any of the Court's prior
cases supports the view that the Fourth Amendment
protects against unreasonable seizures of property only
where privacy or liberty is also implicated.  What is more,
our -plain view- decisions make untenable such a con-
struction of the Amendment.  Suppose for example that
police officers lawfully enter a house, by either complying
with the warrant requirement or satisfying one of its
recognized exceptions -  e.g., through a valid consent or
a showing of exigent circumstances.  If they come across
some item in plain view and seize it, no invasion of
personal privacy has occurred.  Horton, 496 U. S., at
133-134; Brown, 460 U. S., at 739 (opinion of Rehnquist,
J.).  If the boundaries of the Fourth Amendment were
defined exclusively by rights of privacy, -plain view-
seizures would not implicate that constitutional provision
at all.  Yet, far from being automatically upheld, -plain
view- seizures have been scrupulously subjected to Fourth
Amendment inquiry.  Thus, in the absence of consent or
a warrant permitting the seizure of the items in question,
such seizures can be justified only if they meet the
probable cause standard, Arizona v. Hicks, 480 U. S. 321,
326-327 (1987), and if they are unaccompanied by
unlawful trespass.  Horton, 496 U. S., at 136-137.
That is because, the absence of a privacy interest notwith-
standing, -[a] seizure of the article . . . would obviously
invade the owner's possessory interest.-  Id,. at 134; see
also Brown, supra, at 739 (opinion of Rehnquist, J).  The
plain view doctrine -merely reflects an application of the
Fourth Amendment's central requirement of reasonable-
ness to the law governing seizures of property,- ibid.;
Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403 U. S. 443, 468 (1971);
id., at 516 (White, J., concurring and dissenting).
  The Court of Appeals understandably found it necessary
to reconcile its holding with our recognition in the plain
view cases that the Fourth Amendment protects property
as such.  In so doing, the court did not distinguish this
case on the ground that the seizure of the Soldals' home
took place in a noncriminal context.  Indeed, it acknowl-
edged what is evident from our precedents - that the
Amendment's protection applies in the civil context as
well.  See O'Connor v. Ortega, 480 U. S. 709 (1987), New
Jersey v. T. L. O., 469 U. S. 325, 334-335 (1985); Michi-
gan v. Tyler, 436 U. S. 499, 504-506 (1978); Marshall v.
Barlow's, Inc., 436 U. S. 307, 312-313 (1978); Camara v.
Municipal Court of San Francisco, 387 U. S. 523, 528
(1967).
  Nor did the Court of Appeals suggest that the Fourth
Amendment applied exclusively to law enforcement
activities.  It observed, for example, that the Amendment's
protection would be triggered -by a search or other entry
into the home incident to an eviction or repossession,- 942
F. 2d, at 1077.  Instead, the court sought to explain
why the Fourth Amendment protects against seizures of
property in the plain view context, but not in this case,
as follows:
-[S]eizures made in the course of investigations by
police or other law enforcement officers are almost
always, as in the plain view cases, the culmination of
searches.  The police search in order to seize, and it
is the search and ensuing seizure that the Fourth
Amendment by its reference to `searches and seizures'
seeks to regulate.  Seizure means one thing when it
is the outcome of a search; it may mean something
else when it stands apart from a search or any other
investigative activity.  The Fourth Amendment may
still nominally apply, but, precisely because there is
no invasion of privacy, the usual rules do not apply.-
Id., 942 F. 2d at 1079 (emphasis in original).
  We have difficulty with this passage.  The court seem-
ingly construes the Amendment to protect only against
seizures that are the outcome of a search.  But our cases
are to the contrary and hold that seizures of property are
subject to Fourth Amendment scrutiny even though no
search within the meaning of the Amendment has taken
place.  See, e.g., Jacobsen, 466 U. S., at 120-125; Place,
462 U. S., at 706-707; Cardwell, 417 U. S., at 588-589.
More generally, an officer who happens to come across an
individual's property in a public area could seize it only
if Fourth Amendment standards are satisfied-for exam-
ple, if the items are evidence of a crime or contraband.
Cf. Payton v. New York, 445 U. S. 573, 587 (1980).  We
are also puzzled by the last sentence of the excerpt, where
the court announces that the -usual rules- of the Fourth
Amendment are inapplicable if the seizure is not the
result of a search or any other investigative activity
-precisely because there is no invasion of privacy.-  For
the plain view cases clearly state that, notwithstanding
the absence of any interference with privacy, seizures of
effects that are not authorized by a warrant are reason-
able only because there is probable cause to associate the
property with criminal activity.  The seizure of the
weapons in Horton, for example, occurred in the midst of
a search, yet we emphasized that it did not -involve any
invasion of privacy.-  496 U. S., at 133.  In short, our
statement that such seizures must satisfy the Fourth
Amendment and will be deemed reasonable only if the
item's incriminating character is -immediately apparent,-
id., at 136-137, is at odds with the Court of Appeals'
approach.
  The Court of Appeals' effort is both interesting and
creative, but at bottom it simply reasserts the earlier
thesis that the Fourth Amendment protects privacy but
not property.  We remain unconvinced and see no justifi-
cation for departing from our prior cases.  In our view,
the reason why an officer might enter a house or effectu-
ate a seizure is wholly irrelevant to the threshold question
of whether the Amendment applies.  What matters is the
intrusion on the people's security from governmental
interference.  Therefore, the right against unreasonable
seizures would be no less transgressed if the seizure of
the house was undertaken to collect evidence, verify
compliance with a housing regulation, effect an eviction
by the police, or on a whim, for no reason at all.  As we
have observed on more than one occasion, it would be
-anomalous to say that the individual and his private
property are fully protected by the Fourth Amendment
only when the individual is suspected of criminal behav-
ior.-  Camara, 387 U. S., at 530; see also O'Connor, 480
U. S., at 715; T. L. O., 469 U. S., at 335.
  The Court of Appeals also stated that even if, contrary
to its previous rulings, -there is some element or tincture
of a Fourth Amendment seizure, it cannot carry the day
for the Soldals.-  942 F. 2d, at 1080.  Relying on our
decision in Graham v. Connor, 490 U. S. 386 (1989), the
court reasoned that it should look at the -dominant
character of the conduct challenged in a section 1983 case
[to] determine the constitutional standard under which it
is evaluated.-  942 F. 2d, at 1080.  Believing that the
Soldals' claim was more akin to a challenge against the
deprivation of property without due process of law than
against an unreasonable seizure, the court concluded that
they should not be allowed to bring their suit under the
guise of the Fourth Amendment.
  But we see no basis for doling out constitutional pro-
tections in such fashion.  Certain wrongs affect more than
a single right and, accordingly, can implicate more than
one of the Constitution's commands.  Where such multiple
violations are alleged, we are not in the habit of identify-
ing as a preliminary matter the claim's -dominant-
character.  Rather, we examine each constitutional provi-
sion in turn.  See, e.g., Hudson (Fourth Amendment and
Fourteenth Amendment Due Process Clause); Ingraham
v. Wright, 430 U. S. 651 (1977) (Eighth Amendment and
Fourteenth Amendment Due Process Clause).  Graham is
not to the contrary.  Its holding was that claims of
excessive use of force should be analyzed under the
Fourth Amendment's reasonableness standard, rather than
the Fourteenth Amendment's substantive due process test.
We were guided by the fact that, in that case, both
provisions targeted the same sort of governmental conduct
and, as a result, we chose the more -explicit textual
source of constitutional protection- over the -more general-
ized notion of `substantive due process.'-  490 U. S., at
394-395.  Surely, Graham does not bar resort in this case
to the Fourth Amendment's specific protection for -houses,
property, and effects- rather than the general protection
of property in the Due Process Clause.
                           III
  Respondents are fearful, as was the Court of Appeals,
that applying the Fourth Amendment in this context
inevitably will carry it into territory unknown and unfore-
seen: routine repossessions, negligent actions of public
employees that interfere with individuals' right to enjoy
their homes, and the like, thereby federalizing areas of
law traditionally the concern of the States.  For several
reasons, we think the risk is exaggerated.  To begin, our
decision will have no impact on activities such as repos-
sessions or attachments if they involve entry into the
home, intrusion on individuals' privacy, or interference
with their liberty, because they would implicate the
Fourth Amendment even on the Court of Appeals' own
terms.  This was true of the Tenth Circuit's decision in
Specht with which, as we previously noted, the Court of
Appeals expressed agreement.
  More significantly, -reasonableness is still the ultimate
standard- under the Fourth Amendment, Camara, supra,
at 539, which means that numerous seizures of this type
will survive constitutional scrutiny.  As is true in other
circumstances, the reasonableness determination will
reflect a -careful balancing of governmental and private
interests.-  T. L. O., supra, at 341.  Assuming for example
that the officers were acting pursuant to a court order, as
in Specht v. Jenson, 832 F. 2d 1516 (CA10 1987), or
Fuentes v. Shevin, 407 U. S. 67 (1972), and as often would
be the case, a showing of unreasonableness on these facts
would be a laborious task indeed.  Cf. Simms and Wise
v. Slacum, 3 Cranch 300, 301 (1806).  Hence, while there
is no guarantee against the filing of frivolous suits, had
the ejection in this case properly awaited the state court's
judgment it is quite unlikely that the federal court would
have been bothered with a 1983 action alleging a Fourth
Amendment violation.
  Moreover, we doubt that the police will often choose to
further an enterprise knowing that it is contrary to the
law, or proceed to seize property in the absence of objec-
tively reasonable grounds for doing so.  In short, our
reaffirmance of Fourth Amendment principles today should
not foment a wave of new litigation in the federal courts.
                           IV
  The complaint here alleges that respondents, acting
under color of state law, dispossessed the Soldals of their
trailer home by physically tearing it from its foundation
and towing it to another lot.  Taking these allegations as
true, this was no -garden-variety- landlord-tenant or
commercial dispute.  The facts alleged suffice to constitute
a -seizure- within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment,
for they plainly implicate the interests protected by that
provision.  The judgment of the Court of Appeals is,
accordingly, reversed, and the case is remanded for further
proceedings consistent with this opinion.
                                            So ordered.