How important is a purse to a woman?

 (Just to be political correct, could ask the same of a man with his man purse)

Consider the following story:

Minnesota high court nixes ‘purse-as-person’ theory

ST. PAUL, Minn. (CN) — The Minnesota Supreme Court ruled Wednesday against a woman who argued that her purse, carried outside of her car during a traffic stop, was part of her person and therefore not subject to warrantless searches. 

Attorneys for Amber Barrow argued before the court in January for reversal of her 2018 fifth-degree possession conviction, saying that a police officer should not have been allowed to search her purse after she removed it from the vehicle he planned to search. The officer, who had initiated the car search after saying that he smelled marijuana, found four Clonazepam pills in Barrow’s purse after he told Barrow to leave the purse and returned it to the car. 

Justice Natalie Hudson wrote the court’s majority opinion. In it, she found that Barrow’s situation differed from those in two cases she cited: the Minnesota Supreme Court’s 1996 decision in State v. Wynne  and a 1999 concurrence by the U.S. Supreme Court’s Justice Stephen Breyer in Wyoming v. Houghton. 

In Wynne, Hudson noted, a purse was determined to be outside the scope of a search warrant for the defendant’s home because it was not “lying about” the home but worn on the defendant’s shoulder. The difference between the home search and a car search, Hudson wrote, “is material: unlike a home, where a person’s privacy expectations ‘are most heightened.’” In Houghton, she wrote, “the Supreme Court has explained that a passenger’s privacy expectations in a car are ‘considerably diminished.’” 

Justice Margaret Chutich penned a concurrence to the decision in which she proposed an alternate route for Barrow’s case. Chutich noted that while the search of Barrow’s purse was lawful under the federal Constitution, she may have prevailed had she raised a claim under the Minnesota Constitution’s ban on unreasonable searches and seizures. 

https://www.courthousenews.com/minnesota-high-court-nixes-purse-as-person-theory/

So many thoughts come to mind on this one:

1. Like a home, isn't one's car or one's purse part of someone's possession? Shouldn't the police be required to provide a search warrant to search a car or a purse?

2. What constitutes an "unreasonable" search and seizure? 

3. Why can't Americans just be like Canadians and stop worrying so much about who or who isn't carrying marijuana? Sheesh! 

4. What's up with women and their purses?