During an argument with his wife, the petitioner placed a handgun on the dining room table and asked his wife to “shoot [him] and get it over with”, which prompted her to leave. After she was unable to reach her husband by phone later on, so she called the police to request a welfare check.

The responding officers called an ambulance based on the belief that the petitioner posed a risk to himself or others, and the latter accepted to be hospitalized. However, once the petitioner left, the officers located and seized his weapons in his residence.

The petitioner sued, claiming that the officers had entered his home and seized him and his firearms without a warrant in violation of the Fourth Amendment.

The District Court granted summary judgment to the officers.

The Court of Appeal affirmed that decision, stating that the officers' removal of the petitioner and his firearms from his home was justified by a “community caretaking exception” to the warrant requirement.

The Supreme Court held that the Court of Appeals erred in finding that the decision to remove the petitioner’s firearms from his home without a warrant fell within a community caretaking exception and stated that a judicial decision was necessary to do so.