Cite as: 531 U. S. 32 (2000)
Opinion of the Court
routinely engage in this enterprise in many areas of constitutional jurisprudence as a means of sifting abusive governmental conduct from that which is lawful. Cf. 183 F. 3d, at 665. As a result, a program driven by an impermissible purpose may be proscribed while a program impelled by licit purposes is permitted, even though the challenged conduct may be outwardly similar. While reasonableness under the Fourth Amendment is predominantly an objective inquiry, our special needs and administrative search cases demonstrate that purpose is often relevant when suspicionless intrusions pursuant to a general scheme are at issue.2
It goes without saying that our holding today does nothing to alter the constitutional status of the sobriety and border checkpoints that we approved in Sitz and Martinez-Fuerte, or of the type of traffic checkpoint that we suggested would be lawful in Prouse. The constitutionality of such checkpoint programs still depends on a balancing of the competing interests at stake and the effectiveness of the program. See Sitz, 496 U. S., at 450-455; Martinez-Fuerte, 428 U. S., at 556-564. When law enforcement authorities pursue primarily general crime control purposes at checkpoints such as here, however, stops can only be justified by some quantum of individualized suspicion.
Our holding also does not affect the validity of border searches or searches at places like airports and government
2 Because petitioners concede that the primary purpose of the Indianapolis checkpoints is narcotics detection, we need not decide whether the State may establish a checkpoint program with the primary purpose of checking licenses or driver sobriety and a secondary purpose of interdicting narcotics. Specifically, we express no view on the question whether police may expand the scope of a license or sobriety checkpoint seizure in order to detect the presence of drugs in a stopped car. Cf. New Jersey v. T. L. O., 469 U. S. 325, 341 (1985) (search must be " 'reasonably related in scope to the circumstances which justified the interference in the first place' " (quoting Terry v. Ohio, 392 U. S. 1, 20 (1968))); Michigan v. Clifford, 464 U. S. 287, 294-295 (1984) (plurality opinion).
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