Although only five justices signed the majority opinion in United States v. Jones, in reality the entire U.S. Supreme Court agreed that the Obama administration went too far in arguing law enforcement does not need a warrant to continuously track a suspect’s car using a GPS device.

 

“We hold that the government’s installation of a GPS device on a target’s vehicle, and its use of that device to monitor the vehicle’s movements, constitutes a ‘search,’” Justice Antonin Scalia wrote for the five-justice majority, which included Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. and Justices Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Sonia Sotomayor.

 

All nine justices, however, agreed to throw out the life sentence of cocaine dealer Antoine Jones, who was the subject of a warrantless, 28-day surveillance via GPS.

 

The majority did not specify whether the GPS tracking was unreasonable and required a warrant. But one analysis of the decision indicated that police should consider the ruling a warning to obtain probable-cause warrants if they want to conduct prolonged surveillance using GPS.

 

In a case that crossed the usual left-right divide at the Supreme Court, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. wrote that “The use of longer-term GPS monitoring in investigations of most offenses, impinges on expectations of privacy.” Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer and Elena Kagan joined his opinion.

 

Former acting solicitor general Walter Dellinger, who helped defend Jones, called the ruling “a signal event in Fourth Amendment history.”

 

“Law enforcement is now on notice,” Dellinger told The New York Times, “that almost any use of GPS electronic surveillance of a citizen’s movement will be legally questionable unless a warrant is obtained in advance.”

-Noel Brinkerhoff

 

GPS Tracking Needs Warrant, Justices Say (by Barbara Leonard, Courthouse News Service)

Supreme Court Court Rejects Willy-Nilly GPS Tracking (by David Kravets, Wired)

Justices Say GPS Tracker Violated Privacy Rights (by Adam Liptak, New York Times)

Reactions to Jones v. United States: The Government Fared much Better than Everyone Realizes (by Tom Goldstein, SCOTUS Blog)

United States v. Jones (U.S. Supreme Court) (pdf)