[fbdab103]

Is this then a done deal? Or can the Supreme Court somehow decide there was a half-sentence in a Federalist Paper which argued the opposite and invalidate the ruling?

[eurleif]

This is a ruling by a District Court. It could be appealed to the Circuit Court, and then to the Supreme Court.

In the federal court system, District Court decisions are not binding precedent. Circuit Court decisions bind the District Courts in their circuit, and Supreme Court decisions bind all lower courts.

This District Court is in the Second Circuit. Another District Court in the same Circuit made a similar decision in US v. Smith, but the Second Circuit Court has not yet ruled on warrantless border searches of cell phones. Several other Circuit Courts have, however, and their rulings were all opposite of this one: the First Circuit in Alasaad v. Mayorkas; the Fifth Circuit in US v. Castillo; the Seventh Circuit in US v. Wanjiku; and the Ninth Circuit in US v. Cano.

In short: this decision is not binding precedent, and a substantial amount of binding precedent exists in the opposite direction within other circuits.

(Credit for case law information to: https://www.wilmerhale.com/insights/client-alerts/20231115-o...)

[qingcharles]

Exactly this. (and for those unfamiliar with the terms, in federal courts "Circuit Courts" are the first level of appeals courts, which both sides have a right to be heard in, followed by the Supreme Court which is discretionary and only takes on big cases)

When there is a "circuit split" like this, with different appellate courts going in opposite directions you are almost 100% guaranteed SCOTUS has to step in to fix it.

I don't know the outcome of this, as I've not studied border searches in years, but while SCOTUS went in the favor of defendants on prior search cases (e.g. Riley v. California, 573 U.S. 373, cellphone searches on person during arrest; Carpenter v. United States, 585 U.S. ___ (2018), cellphone GPS logs from carrier; United States v. Jones, 565 U.S. 400 (2012), GPS attached to car), the court has changed to the right, which generally (but not always) means less defendant-friendly, more government-friendly.

If I had to wager, SCOTUS will uphold warrantless border searches.

[dcdc123]

So does that mean they may not want to appeal it at all to avoid a ruling in a higher court?

[qingcharles]

SCOTUS doesn't always make shitty decisions. Sometimes dozens of lower courts will all make a shitty decision and then it gets to SCOTUS and they somehow use their greater resources to produce a better decision contrary to everyone's expectations.

IIRC pretty much 99% of state and fed courts had ruled against the warrant requirement for GPS tracking until it hit SCOTUS and they went the opposite direction (just): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Jones_(2012)

[Retric]

2012 was a very different court.

  Gorsuch, Neil M.        April 10, 2017  
  Kavanaugh, Brett M.     October 6, 2018  
  Barrett, Amy Coney      October 27, 2020  
  Jackson, Ketanji Brown  June 30, 2022

[ushiroda80]

The Supreme Court has been nearly perfectly consistently shitty in the last 5 years.

[BenFranklin100]

A textualist interpretation of the constitution would likely take a very dim view of the federal government trying to stretch its powers and get around the Fourth Amendment. I don’t think we have much to worry about on this topic from the current court.

[BenFranklin100]

For the Hacker News members who are reflexively downvoting my comment, presumably for political reasons, I refer you to Riley vs. California, the 2014 SCOTUS decision that ruled warrantless searches of cell phones were unconstitutional:

https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/573/373/

The opinion was written by Roberts with a concurrence by Alito.

Again, presumably, the 2024 court is likely to take an even a dimmer view of the Feds trying to expand their powers and circumvent the 4th Amendment than the 2014 court.

[JumpCrisscross]

> textualist interpretation of the constitution would likely take a very dim view of the federal government trying to stretch its powers and get around the Fourth Amendment

Scalia was textualist. "Justices Antonin Scalia, Amy Coney Barrett, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch describe themselves as originalists in scholarly writings and public speeches" [1]. (In several cases, e.g. the application of Sarbanes-Oxley to the January 6th cases, they dismissed a textualist interpretation.)

Textualism would have trouble with this case because phones aren't mentioned in the Constitution. Originalism does better, which explains Riley.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Originalism

[refurb]

I think the issue is that suspension of certain Constitutional rights at the border is a reasonable limit on those rights.

[ceejayoz]

SCOTUS can absolutely decide differently when one of these gets there.

[gumby]

Since smart phones are explicitly mentioned in Article 4 along with bump stocks, it’s pretty clear how this SCOTUS would rule.

[yieldcrv]

Alternatively, when the Supreme court composition has changed and shown a willingness to view old decisions as bad law, its a great time for a district court to break rank with precedent.

We have a couple decades to shape the country however you want, you don’t have to act like a victim because the justices lied during their confirmation hearings on one specific topic, just bring different cases for other various inconveniences you have.