FLORIDA v. J. L.

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266 OCTOBER TERM, 1999
Syllabus
FLORIDA v. J. L.
certiorari to the supreme court of florida
No. 98–1993. Argued February 29, 2000—Decided March 28, 2000
After an anonymous caller reported to the Miami-Dade Police that a young
black male standing at a particular bus stop and wearing a plaid shirt
was carrying a gun, officers went to the bus stop and saw three black
males, one of whom, respondent J. L., was wearing a plaid shirt. Apart
from the tip, the officers had no reason to suspect any of the three of
illegal conduct. The officers did not see a firearm or observe any un-
usual movements. One of the officers frisked J. L. and seized a gun
from his pocket. J. L., who was then almost 16, was charged under
state law with carrying a concealed firearm without a license and pos-
sessing a firearm while under the age of 18. The trial court granted
his motion to suppress the gun as the fruit of an unlawful search. The
intermediate appellate court reversed, but the Supreme Court of Flor-
ida quashed that decision and held the search invalid under the Fourth
Amendment.
Held: An anonymous tip that a person is carrying a gun is not, without
more, sufficient to justify a police officer’s stop and frisk of that person.
An officer, for the protection of himself and others, may conduct a care-
fully limited search for weapons in the outer clothing of persons engaged
in unusual conduct where, inter alia, the officer reasonably concludes in
light of his experience that criminal activity may be afoot and that the
persons in question may be armed and presently dangerous. Terry v.
Ohio, 392 U. S. 1, 30. Here, the officers’ suspicion that J. L. was carry-
ing a weapon arose not from their own observations but solely from a
call made from an unknown location by an unknown caller. The tip
lacked sufficient indicia of reliability to provide reasonable suspicion to
make a Terry stop: It provided no predictive information and therefore
left the police without means to test the informant’s knowledge or credi-
bility. See Alabama v. White, 496 U. S. 325, 327. The contentions of
Florida and the United States as amicus that the tip was reliable be-
cause it accurately described J. L.’s visible attributes misapprehend the
reliability needed for a tip to justify a Terry stop. The reasonable sus-
picion here at issue requires that a tip be reliable in its assertion of
illegality, not just in its tendency to identify a determinate person.
This Court also declines to adopt the argument that the standard Terry
analysis should be modified to license a “firearm exception,” under
which a tip alleging an illegal gun would justify a stop and frisk even if

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Syllabus
the accusation would fail standard pre-search reliability testing. The
facts of this case do not require the Court to speculate about the circum-
stances under which the danger alleged in an anonymous tip might be
so great—e. g., a report of a person carrying a bomb—as to justify a
search even without a showing of reliability. Pp. 269–274.
727 So. 2d 204, affirmed.
Ginsburg, J., delivered the opinion for a unanimous Court. Kennedy,
J., filed a concurring opinion, in which Rehnquist, C. J., joined, post,
p. 274.
Michael J. Neimand, Assistant Attorney General of Flor-
ida, argued the cause for petitioner. With him on the briefs
was Robert A. Butterworth, Attorney General.
Irving L. Gornstein argued the cause for the United
States as amicus curiae urging reversal. With him on the
brief were Solicitor General Waxman, Assistant Attorney
General Robinson, and Deputy Solicitor General Dreeben.
Harvey J. Sepler argued the cause for respondent. With
him on the brief were Bennett H. Brummer and Andrew
Stanton.*
*Briefs of amici curiae urging reversal were filed for Americans for
Effective Law Enforcement, Inc., et al. by Wayne W. Schmidt, James P.
Manak, Richard Weintraub, and Bernard J. Farber; for the Justice Coali-
tion by Scott D. Makar; for the National Association of Police Organiza-
tions by Stephen R. McSpadden; and for the State of Illinois et al. by
James E. Ryan, Attorney General of Illinois, Joel D. Bertocchi, Solicitor
General, William Browers and Michael M. Glick, Assistant Attorneys
General, and Dan Schweitzer, joined by the Attorneys General for their
respective jurisdictions as follows: Bill Pryor of Alabama, Janet Napoli-
tano of Arizona, Mark Pryor of Arkansas, Bill Lockyer of California, Ken
Salazar of Colorado, John M. Bailey of Connecticut, M. Jane Brady of
Delaware, Earl I. Anzai of Hawaii, Jeffrey A. Modisett of Indiana, Thomas
J. Miller of Iowa, Carla J. Stovall of Kansas, Richard P. Ieyoub of Louisi-
ana, J. Joseph Curran of Maryland, Jennifer M. Granholm of Michigan,
Mike Hatch of Minnesota, Jeremiah W. (Jay) Nixon of Missouri, Joseph
P. Mazurek of Montana, Frankie Sue Del Papa of Nevada, Philip T. Mc-
Laughlin of New Hampshire, Patricia A. Madrid of New Mexico, Michael
F. Easley of North Carolina, Betty D. Montgomery of Ohio, W. A. Drew
Edmondson of Oklahoma, Hardy Myers of Oregon, D. Michael Fisher of

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268 FLORIDA v. J. L.
Opinion of the Court
Justice Ginsburg delivered the opinion of the Court.
The question presented in this case is whether an anony-
mous tip that a person is carrying a gun is, without more,
sufficient to justify a police officer’s stop and frisk of that
person. We hold that it is not.
I
On October 13, 1995, an anonymous caller reported to the
Miami-Dade Police that a young black male standing at a
particular bus stop and wearing a plaid shirt was carrying a
gun. App. to Pet. for Cert. A–40 to A–41. So far as the
record reveals, there is no audio recording of the tip, and
nothing is known about the informant. Sometime after the
police received the tip—the record does not say how long—
two officers were instructed to respond. They arrived at
the bus stop about six minutes later and saw three black
males “just hanging out [there].” Id., at A–42. One of the
three, respondent J. L., was wearing a plaid shirt. Id., at
A–41. Apart from the tip, the officers had no reason to sus-
pect any of the three of illegal conduct. The officers did not
see a firearm, and J. L. made no threatening or otherwise
unusual movements. Id., at A–42 to A–44. One of the of-
ficers approached J. L., told him to put his hands up on the
bus stop, frisked him, and seized a gun from J. L.’s pocket.
The second officer frisked the other two individuals, against
whom no allegations had been made, and found nothing.
Pennsylvania, Jose A. Fuentes Agostini of Puerto Rico, Sheldon White-
house of Rhode Island, Charles M. Condon of South Carolina, Paul G.
Summers of Tennessee, John Cornyn of Texas, Jan Graham of Utah,
Christine O. Gregoire of Washington, and Gay Woodhouse of Wyoming.
Briefs of amici curiae urging affirmance were filed for the Congress of
Racial Equality, Inc., by Stefan B. Tahmassebi; for the National Associa-
tion of Criminal Defense Lawyers et al. by James J. Tomkovicz and Bar-
bara E. Bergman; for the National Rifle Association of America et al. by
Robert Dowlut and David B. Kopel; and for the Rutherford Institute by
John W. Whitehead and Steven H. Aden.

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Opinion of the Court
J. L., who was at the time of the frisk “10 days shy of his
16th birth[day],” Tr. of Oral Arg. 6, was charged under state
law with carrying a concealed firearm without a license and
possessing a firearm while under the age of 18. He moved
to suppress the gun as the fruit of an unlawful search, and
the trial court granted his motion. The intermediate ap-
pellate court reversed, but the Supreme Court of Florida
quashed that decision and held the search invalid under the
Fourth Amendment. 727 So. 2d 204 (1998).
Anonymous tips, the Florida Supreme Court stated, are
generally less reliable than tips from known informants and
can form the basis for reasonable suspicion only if accompa-
nied by specific indicia of reliability, for example, the correct
forecast of a subject’s “ ‘not easily predicted’ ” movements.
Id., at 207 (quoting Alabama v. White, 496 U. S. 325, 332
(1990)). The tip leading to the frisk of J. L., the court ob-
served, provided no such predictions, nor did it contain any
other qualifying indicia of reliability. 727 So. 2d, at 207–208.
Two justices dissented. The safety of the police and the
public, they maintained, justifies a “firearm exception” to the
general rule barring investigatory stops and frisks on the
basis of bare-boned anonymous tips. Id., at 214–215.
Seeking review in this Court, the State of Florida noted
that the decision of the State’s Supreme Court conflicts with
decisions of other courts declaring similar searches compati-
ble with the Fourth Amendment. See, e. g., United States
v. DeBerry, 76 F. 3d 884, 886–887 (CA7 1996); United States
v. Clipper, 973 F. 2d 944, 951 (CADC 1992). We granted
certiorari, 528 U. S. 963 (1999), and now affirm the judgment
of the Florida Supreme Court.
II
Our “stop and frisk” decisions begin with Terry v. Ohio,
392 U. S. 1 (1968). This Court held in Terry:
“[W]here a police officer observes unusual conduct
which leads him reasonably to conclude in light of his

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270 FLORIDA v. J. L.
Opinion of the Court
experience that criminal activity may be afoot and that
the persons with whom he is dealing may be armed and
presently dangerous, where in the course of investigat-
ing this behavior he identifies himself as a policeman
and makes reasonable inquiries, and where nothing in
the initial stages of the encounter serves to dispel his
reasonable fear for his own or others’ safety, he is enti-
tled for the protection of himself and others in the area
to conduct a carefully limited search of the outer cloth-
ing of such persons in an attempt to discover weapons
which might be used to assault him.” Id., at 30.
In the instant case, the officers’ suspicion that J. L. was
carrying a weapon arose not from any observations of their
own but solely from a call made from an unknown location
by an unknown caller. Unlike a tip from a known informant
whose reputation can be assessed and who can be held re-
sponsible if her allegations turn out to be fabricated, see
Adams v. Williams, 407 U. S. 143, 146–147 (1972), “an anony-
mous tip alone seldom demonstrates the informant’s basis of
knowledge or veracity,” Alabama v. White, 496 U. S., at 329.
As we have recognized, however, there are situations in
which an anonymous tip, suitably corroborated, exhibits “suf-
ficient indicia of reliability to provide reasonable suspicion to
make the investigatory stop.” Id., at 327. The question we
here confront is whether the tip pointing to J. L. had those
indicia of reliability.
In White, the police received an anonymous tip asserting
that a woman was carrying cocaine and predicting that she
would leave an apartment building at a specified time, get
into a car matching a particular description, and drive to a
named motel. Ibid. Standing alone, the tip would not have
justified a Terry stop. 496 U. S., at 329. Only after police ob-
servation showed that the informant had accurately predicted
the woman’s movements, we explained, did it become reason-
able to think the tipster had inside knowledge about the sus-
pect and therefore to credit his assertion about the cocaine.

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Opinion of the Court
Id., at 332. Although the Court held that the suspicion in
White became reasonable after police surveillance, we re-
garded the case as borderline. Knowledge about a person’s
future movements indicates some familiarity with that per-
son’s affairs, but having such knowledge does not necessarily
imply that the informant knows, in particular, whether that
person is carrying hidden contraband. We accordingly clas-
sified White as a “close case.” Ibid.
The tip in the instant case lacked the moderate indicia of
reliability present in White and essential to the Court’s deci-
sion in that case. The anonymous call concerning J. L. pro-
vided no predictive information and therefore left the police
without means to test the informant’s knowledge or credibil-
ity. That the allegation about the gun turned out to be cor-
rect does not suggest that the officers, prior to the frisks,
had a reasonable basis for suspecting J. L. of engaging in
unlawful conduct: The reasonableness of official suspicion
must be measured by what the officers knew before they
conducted their search. All the police had to go on in this
case was the bare report of an unknown, unaccountable in-
formant who neither explained how he knew about the gun
nor supplied any basis for believing he had inside informa-
tion about J. L. If White was a close case on the reliability
of anonymous tips, this one surely falls on the other side of
the line.
Florida contends that the tip was reliable because its de-
scription of the suspect’s visible attributes proved accurate:
There really was a young black male wearing a plaid shirt
at the bus stop. Brief for Petitioner 20–21. The United
States as amicus curiae makes a similar argument, propos-
ing that a stop and frisk should be permitted “when (1) an
anonymous tip provides a description of a particular person
at a particular location illegally carrying a concealed firearm,
(2) police promptly verify the pertinent details of the tip ex-
cept the existence of the firearm, and (3) there are no factors
that cast doubt on the reliability of the tip . . . .” Brief

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Opinion of the Court
for United States 16. These contentions misapprehend the
reliability needed for a tip to justify a Terry stop.
An accurate description of a subject’s readily observable
location and appearance is of course reliable in this limited
sense: It will help the police correctly identify the person
whom the tipster means to accuse. Such a tip, however,
does not show that the tipster has knowledge of concealed
criminal activity. The reasonable suspicion here at issue re-
quires that a tip be reliable in its assertion of illegality, not
just in its tendency to identify a determinate person. Cf. 4
W. LaFave, Search and Seizure § 9.4(h), p. 213 (3d ed. 1996)
(distinguishing reliability as to identification, which is often
important in other criminal law contexts, from reliability as
to the likelihood of criminal activity, which is central in
anonymous-tip cases).
A second major argument advanced by Florida and the
United States as amicus is, in essence, that the standard
Terry analysis should be modified to license a “firearm ex-
ception.” Under such an exception, a tip alleging an illegal
gun would justify a stop and frisk even if the accusation
would fail standard pre-search reliability testing. We de-
cline to adopt this position.
Firearms are dangerous, and extraordinary dangers some-
times justify unusual precautions. Our decisions recognize
the serious threat that armed criminals pose to public safety;
Terry’s rule, which permits protective police searches on the
basis of reasonable suspicion rather than demanding that of-
ficers meet the higher standard of probable cause, responds
to this very concern. See 392 U. S., at 30. But an auto-
matic firearm exception to our established reliability analysis
would rove too far. Such an exception would enable any
person seeking to harass another to set in motion an intru-
sive, embarrassing police search of the targeted person sim-
ply by placing an anonymous call falsely reporting the
target’s unlawful carriage of a gun. Nor could one securely
confine such an exception to allegations involving firearms.

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Opinion of the Court
Several Courts of Appeals have held it per se foreseeable
for people carrying significant amounts of illegal drugs to be
carrying guns as well. See, e. g., United States v. Sakyi, 160
F. 3d 164, 169 (CA4 1998); United States v. Dean, 59 F. 3d
1479, 1490, n. 20 (CA5 1995); United States v. Odom, 13 F. 3d
949, 959 (CA6 1994); United States v. Martinez, 958 F. 2d
217, 219 (CA8 1992). If police officers may properly conduct
Terry frisks on the basis of bare-boned tips about guns, it
would be reasonable to maintain under the above-cited deci-
sions that the police should similarly have discretion to frisk
based on bare-boned tips about narcotics. As we clarified
when we made indicia of reliability critical in Adams and
White, the Fourth Amendment is not so easily satisfied. Cf.
Richards v. Wisconsin, 520 U. S. 385, 393–394 (1997) (reject-
ing a per se exception to the “knock and announce” rule for
narcotics cases partly because “the reasons for creating an
exception in one category [of Fourth Amendment cases] can,
relatively easily, be applied to others,” thus allowing the ex-
ception to swallow the rule).*
The facts of this case do not require us to speculate about
the circumstances under which the danger alleged in an
anonymous tip might be so great as to justify a search even
without a showing of reliability. We do not say, for example,
that a report of a person carrying a bomb need bear the
*At oral argument, petitioner also advanced the position that J. L.’s
youth made the stop and frisk valid, because it is a crime in Florida for
persons under the age of 21 to carry concealed firearms. See Fla. Stat.
§ 790.01 (1997) (carrying a concealed weapon without a license is a misde-
meanor), § 790.06(2)(b) (only persons aged 21 or older may be licensed to
carry concealed weapons). This contention misses the mark. Even as-
suming that the arresting officers could be sure that J. L. was under 21,
they would have had reasonable suspicion that J. L. was engaged in crimi-
nal activity only if they could be confident that he was carrying a gun in
the first place. The mere fact that a tip, if true, would describe illegal
activity does not mean that the police may make a Terry stop without
meeting the reliability requirement, and the fact that J. L. was under 21
in no way made the gun tip more reliable than if he had been an adult.

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274 FLORIDA v. J. L.
Kennedy, J., concurring
indicia of reliability we demand for a report of a person car-
rying a firearm before the police can constitutionally conduct
a frisk. Nor do we hold that public safety officials in quar-
ters where the reasonable expectation of Fourth Amendment
privacy is diminished, such as airports, see Florida v. Rodri-
guez, 469 U. S. 1 (1984) (per curiam), and schools, see New
Jersey v. T. L. O., 469 U. S. 325 (1985), cannot conduct protec-
tive searches on the basis of information insufficient to jus-
tify searches elsewhere.
Finally, the requirement that an anonymous tip bear
standard indicia of reliability in order to justify a stop in no
way diminishes a police officer’s prerogative, in accord with
Terry, to conduct a protective search of a person who has
already been legitimately stopped. We speak in today’s de-
cision only of cases in which the officer’s authority to make
the initial stop is at issue. In that context, we hold that
an anonymous tip lacking indicia of reliability of the kind
contemplated in Adams and White does not justify a stop
and frisk whenever and however it alleges the illegal posses-
sion of a firearm.
The judgment of the Florida Supreme Court is affirmed.
It is so ordered.
Justice Kennedy, with whom The Chief Justice
joins, concurring.
On the record created at the suppression hearing, the
Court’s decision is correct. The Court says all that is neces-
sary to resolve this case, and I join the opinion in all re-
spects. It might be noted, however, that there are many
indicia of reliability respecting anonymous tips that we have
yet to explore in our cases.
When a police officer testifies that a suspect aroused the
officer’s suspicion, and so justifies a stop and frisk, the courts
can weigh the officer’s credibility and admit evidence seized
pursuant to the frisk even if no one, aside from the officer
and defendant themselves, was present or observed the sei-

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Kennedy, J., concurring
zure. An anonymous telephone tip without more is differ-
ent, however; for even if the officer’s testimony about receipt
of the tip is found credible, there is a second layer of inquiry
respecting the reliability of the informant that cannot be pur-
sued. If the telephone call is truly anonymous, the inform-
ant has not placed his credibility at risk and can lie with
impunity. The reviewing court cannot judge the credibil-
ity of the informant and the risk of fabrication becomes
unacceptable.
On this record, then, the Court is correct in holding that
the telephone tip did not justify the arresting officer’s imme-
diate stop and frisk of respondent. There was testimony
that an anonymous tip came in by a telephone call and noth-
ing more. The record does not show whether some notation
or other documentation of the call was made either by a voice
recording or tracing the call to a telephone number. The
prosecution recounted just the tip itself and the later verifi-
cation of the presence of the three young men in the circum-
stances the Court describes.
It seems appropriate to observe that a tip might be anony-
mous in some sense yet have certain other features, either
supporting reliability or narrowing the likely class of inform-
ants, so that the tip does provide the lawful basis for some
police action. One such feature, as the Court recognizes, is
that the tip predicts future conduct of the alleged criminal.
There may be others. For example, if an unnamed caller
with a voice which sounds the same each time tells police on
two successive nights about criminal activity which in fact
occurs each night, a similar call on the third night ought not
be treated automatically like the tip in the case now before
us. In the instance supposed, there would be a plausible
argument that experience cures some of the uncertainty sur-
rounding the anonymity, justifying a proportionate police re-
sponse. In today’s case, however, the State provides us with
no data about the reliability of anonymous tips. Nor do we
know whether the dispatcher or arresting officer had any

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276 FLORIDA v. J. L.
Kennedy, J., concurring
objective reason to believe that this tip had some particular
indicia of reliability.
If an informant places his anonymity at risk, a court can
consider this factor in weighing the reliability of the tip. An
instance where a tip might be considered anonymous but
nevertheless sufficiently reliable to justify a proportionate
police response may be when an unnamed person driving a
car the police officer later describes stops for a moment and,
face to face, informs the police that criminal activity is occur-
ring. This too seems to be different from the tip in the pres-
ent case. See United States v. Sierra-Hernandez, 581 F. 2d
760 (CA9 1978).
Instant caller identification is widely available to police,
and, if anonymous tips are proving unreliable and distracting
to police, squad cars can be sent within seconds to the loca-
tion of the telephone used by the informant. Voice record-
ing of telephone tips might, in appropriate cases, be used by
police to locate the caller. It is unlawful to make false re-
ports to the police, e. g., Fla. Stat. Ann. § 365.171(16) (Supp.
2000); Fla. Stat. § 817.49 (1994), and the ability of the police
to trace the identity of anonymous telephone informants may
be a factor which lends reliability to what, years earlier,
might have been considered unreliable anonymous tips.
These matters, of course, must await discussion in other
cases, where the issues are presented by the record.