The U.S. Supreme Court case City of Indianapolis, et al. v. James Edmond et al., 2000 revolved around the constitutionality of drug interdiction checkpoints set up by the city's police department to intercept illegal narcotics. The plaintiffs, James Edmond and Joell Palmer, argued that these roadblocks violated their Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable searches and seizures as they were stopped without any individualized suspicion of wrongdoing. The court ruled in favor of Edmond and Palmer with a 6-3 decision stating that while sobriety checkpoints are constitutional because they aim to prevent immediate harm caused by drunk driving, drug interdiction checkpoints primarily serve general crime control purposes which do not justify intrusion on constitutionally guaranteed privacy rights under the Fourth Amendment.

In the dissenting opinion for City of Indianapolis v. James Edmond et al., Justice Clarence Thomas, joined by Chief Justice William Rehnquist, argued that the Fourth Amendment does not require individualized suspicion at all traffic checkpoints. They contended that the majority's decision to invalidate drug interdiction checkpoints was based on a misinterpretation of previous Supreme Court rulings and an undue emphasis on law enforcement intent rather than objective effects. The dissenters believed that if a checkpoint program primarily serves regulatory purposes such as ensuring driver sobriety or verifying licenses and registrations, it should be considered constitutional even if officers also check for drugs during these stops. They warned against creating new categories of unconstitutional searches based solely on perceived primary purpose and suggested this could lead to arbitrary results in future cases.