Curtilage:
But with the rise of the knock and talk have come more and more cases testing the boundaries of the consent on which they depend. Sometimes, officers appear with overbearing force or otherwise seek to suggest that a homeowner has no choice but to cooperate. Other times, officers fail to head directly to the front door to speak with the homeowner, choosing to wander the property first to search for whatever they can find.
This Court addressed the second sort of problem in Florida v. Jardines, 569 U. S. 1 (2013). There, the Court recognized that a home’s “curtilage,” the area immediately surrounding it, is protected by the Fourth Amendment much like the home itself. [592 U. S. ____ (2020), Associate Justice Gorsuch]
