In 1995 the Miami-Dade Police Department received an anonymous tip that a young black male was at a bus stop wearing a plaid shirt and carrying a firearm.

Acting solely on the tip (the officers did not observe any criminal or suspicious behavior), they searched all three, and found a pistol in the pocket of the man wearing the plaid shirt.

At trial the court granted the juvenile defendant's motion to suppress evidence as fruit of an unreasonable search and seizure.

The United States Supreme Court held in a unanimous opinion by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg that the search was unreasonable.

The Court further declined to create a standard "firearms exception" to the Terry doctrine, as was recognized in some Federal circuits, stating, among other things, that "[s]uch an exception would enable any person seeking to harass another to set in motion an intrusive, embarrassing police search of the targeted person simply by placing an anonymous call falsely reporting the target's unlawful carriage of a gun .