HB1418 creates an exemption for a law-enforcement officer to arrest a person without a warrant for the offense of “harassing” a public safety agency.
The Senate passed HB1418 on March 25, 2025, by a vote of 44 to 1. We have assigned minuses to the yeas because this ill-advised bill vaguely defines “harassment” as the intent to “annoy” or “frighten” another person or public safety agency. A person could be wrongly subject to warrantless arrest and guilty of an offense for making “a telephone call anonymously or in offensively coarse language” to a “911 emergency line, public safety answering point, or an emergency responder communication system.” Apart from exigent circumstances (i.e., imminent harm, the destruction of evidence, or the escape of a suspect), the U.S. Constitution’s Fourth Amendment explicitly protects every American from warrantless arrest. North Dakota lawmakers should strictly uphold, not needlessly violate, the Bill of Rights.
