"A hotel owner who refuses to give an officer access to his or her registry can be arrested on the spot."

"The Court has held that business owners cannot reasonably be put to this kind of choice... Absent an opportunity for precompliance review, the ordinance creates an intolerable risk that searches authorized by it will exceed statutory limits, or be used as a pretext to harass hotel operators and their guests. Even if a hotel has been searched 10 times a day, every day, for three months, without any violation being found, the operator can only refuse to comply with an officer’s demand to turn over the registry at his or her own peril...."

Writes Justice Sotomayor in today's 5-to-4 decision in Los Angeles v. Patel.

In dissent, Justice Scalia paints a dark picture of motels:

Motels not only provide housing to vulnerable transient populations, they are also a particularly attractive site for criminal activity ranging from drug dealing and prostitution to human trafficking. Offering privacy and anonymity on the cheap, they have been employed as prisons for migrants smuggled across the border and held for ransom, see Sanchez, Immigrant Smugglers Become More Ruthless, Washington Post, June 28, 2004, p. A3; Wagner, Human Smuggling, Arizona Republic, July 23, 2006, p. A1, and rendezvous sites where child sex workers meet their clients on threat of violence from their procurers....

An administrative, warrantless-search ordinance that narrowly limits the scope of searches to a single business record, that does not authorize entry upon premises not open to the public, and that is supported by the need to prevent fabrication of guest registers, is, to say the least, far afield from the laws at issue in the cases the Court relies upon. The Court concludes that such minor intrusions, permissible when the police are trying to tamp down the market in stolen auto parts, are “unreasonable” when police are instead attempting to stamp out the market in child sex slaves.

Scalia is joined by Roberts and Thomas, but not Alito, who writes his own dissenting opinion, which is joined by Roberts and Thomas. Alito also expresses concern about what he calls "child-sex traffickers":

But even if the Court were 100% correct, it still should uphold [Los Angeles Municipal Code] §41.49(3)(a) because many other applications of this law are constitutional [so it is not facially unconstitutional]. Here are five examples....

Example Three. A neighborhood of “pay by the hour” motels is a notorious gathering spot for child-sex traffickers. Police officers drive through the neighborhood late one night and see unusual amounts of activity at a particular motel. The officers stop and ask the motel operator for the names of those who paid with cash to rent rooms for less than three hours. The operator refuses to provide the information. Requesting to see the register—and arresting the operator for failing to provide it—would be reasonable under the “totality of the circumstances.”

In case you're wondering what kept Alito from signing on to the Scalia opinion, Alito restricts himse.f to the problem with making a facial challenge to the ordinance:

There are serious arguments that the Fourth Amendment’s application to warrantless searches and seizures is inherently inconsistent with facial challenges....  But assuming such facial challenges ever make sense conceptually, this particular one fails under basic principles of facial invalidation. The Court’s contrary holding is befuddling.

Justice Scalia looks not only at the problem of making a facial challenge but also at the "exception to normal warrant requirements" that applies to "searches of closely regulated businesses," which he thinks should include motels:

Reflecting the unique public role of motels and their commercial forebears, governments have long subjected these businesses to unique public duties, and have established inspection regimes to ensure compliance. As Blackstone observed, “Inns, in particular, being intended for the lodging and receipt of travellers, may be indicted, suppressed, and the inn-keepers fined, if they refuse to entertain a traveller without a very sufficient cause: for thus to frustrate the end of their institution is held to be disorderly behavior.” 4 W. Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England 168 (1765). Justice Story similarly recognized “[t]he soundness of the public policy of subjecting particular classes of persons to extraordinary responsibility, in cases where an extraordinary confidence is necessarily reposed in them, and there is an extraordinary temptation to fraud, or danger of plunder.” J. Story, Commentaries on the Law of Bailments §464, pp. 487–488 (5th ed. 1851). Accordingly, in addition to the obligation to receive any paying guest, “innkeepers are bound to take, not merely ordinary care, but uncommon care, of the goods, money, and baggage of their guests,” id., §470, at 495, as travellers “are obliged to rely almost implicitly on the good faith of innholders, whose education and morals are none of the best, and who might have frequent opportunities of associating with ruffians and pilferers,” id., §471, at 498.

Sotomayor's answer to that is:

Petitioner attempts to recast this hodgepodge of regulations as a comprehensive scheme by referring to a “centuries-old tradition” of warrantless searches of hotels. Brief for Petitioner 34–36. History is relevant when deter-mining whether an industry is closely regulated. See,e.g., Burger, 482 U. S., at 707. The historical record here, however, is not as clear as petitioner suggests. The City and Justice Scalia principally point to evidence that hotels were treated as public accommodations. Brief for Petitioner 34–36; post, at 5–6, and n. 1. For instance, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts required innkeepers to “ ‘furnish[ ] . . . suitable provisions and lodging, for the refreshment and entertainment of strangers and travellers, pasturing and stable room, hay and provender . . . for their horses and cattle.’ ” Brief for Petitioner 35 (quoting An Act For The Due Regulation Of Licensed Houses (1786), reprinted in Acts and Laws of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts 209 (1893)). But laws obligating inns to provide suitable lodging to all paying guests are not the same as laws subjecting inns to warrantless searches. Petitioner also asserts that “[f]or a long time, [hotel] owners left their registers open to widespread inspection.” Brief for Petitioner 51. Setting aside that modern hotel registries contain sensitive information, such as driver’s licenses and credit card numbers for which there is no historic analog, the fact that some hotels chose to make registries accessible to the public has little bearing on whether government authorities could have viewed these documents on demand without a hotel’s consent.