In a shockingly unanimous decision handed down this morning in Riley v. California, SCOTUS ruled that police must obtain a warrant to search the contents of your cell phone in all but the most extraordinary circumstances:
In broad language, Chief Justice John Roberts carved out protections for privacy in the digital age, saying that “more substantial privacy interests are at stake when digital data is involved” than in the past, in part because a cell phone collects “in one place many distinct types of information that reveal much more in combination than any isolated record.” …
Law enforcement officials are still free to search the immediate area of an arrest to ensure their safety and protect evidence without a warrant. Police can also seek a warrant to search a cell phone from an arrested suspect. But the decision is notable because the court has struggled in past cases to define clear and broad rules where digital technology and constitutional rights collided.
Ian Millhiser outlines the court’s argument for why a “search incident to arrest” – a general exception to the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement – can’t be applied to the contents of your phone:
As Roberts lays out, few of the traditional justifications for a search incident to arrest authorize a full search of a suspect’s cell phone.
The data stored on a phone “cannot itself be used as a weapon to harm an arresting officer or to effectuate the arrestee’s escape.” If the phone conceals a weapon, officers can search the physical phone itself without actually accessing its electronic contents. And, if police fear that a suspect may delete incriminating evidence on the phone, in most cases they can alleviate this fear by taking the phone from the suspect and waiting until they obtain a warrant to search it. If they fear that any data on the phone may be remotely wiped, they can store the phone in a place where cell phone signals cannot reach it.
These reasons, combined with the distinct character of cell phones as compared to the kind of objects people used to carry on their person when the Court’s Fourth Amendment doctrines developed, justify requiring police to obtain a warrant before they may search a cell phone. As Roberts lays out, “[p]rior to the digital age, people did not typically carry a cache of sensitive personal information with them as they went about their day. Now it is the person who is not carrying a cell phone, with all that it contains, who is the exception.”
Ilya Shapiro comments on the court’s “really surprising” unanimity:
Sweeping rulings on high-profile subjects tend to split the Court, whether ideologically or, in criminal procedure cases like this one, between formalists and pragmatists. Unanimous rulings, meanwhile, tend to be cautious, splitting the baby in a way that doesn’t significantly change the law. Yet here we have a loud and unified “bright-line rule” that sets a major standard for the digital age. Kudos to the Court—and raspberries to the federal government, which has now had its expansive arguments rejected unanimously 11 times since January 2012.
And Drum cheers:
See? I told you the Supreme Court was a remarkably agreeable place. And in this case, they were remarkably agreeable even though lower courts had split on this issue and it could easily have broken down along normal left (yay civil liberties!) and right (yay law enforcement!) lines. Instead, all nine of the justices did the right thing. For a brief moment, we can all celebrate.
Read the ruling in full here. The Dish covered arguments in the Riley case here.
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