Supreme Court Rules GPS Tracking of Vehicle Constitutes Search
by Justin Shubow
Posted January 23, 2012, 1:24 PM
The Supreme Court today delivered its opinion in United States v. Jones, a case regarding whether police officers’ warrantless installation and use of a GPS tracking device on a suspect’s vehicle violated the Fourth Amendment. (Find Orin Kerr's earlier SCOTUScast on the case here.) The court ruled unanimously that the use of the GPS tracking was in fact an unconstitutional search.
Justice Antonin Scalia delivered the opinion, which was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Anthony Kennedy, Sonia Sotomayor (who also filed a concurring opinion), and Clarence Thomas:
It is important to be clear about what occurred in this case: The Government physically occupied private property for the purpose of obtaining information. We have no doubt that such a physical intrusion would have been considered a "search" within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment when it was adopted.
Justice Samuel Alito filed a concurring opinion, joined by Justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Elena Kagan. Alito wrote:
[The majority's] holding, in my judgment, is unwise. It strains the language of the Fourth Amendment; it has little if any support in current Fourth Amendment case law; and it is highly artificial.
I would analyze the question presented in this case by asking whether respondent’s reasonable expectations of privacy were violated by the long-term monitoring of the movements of the vehicle he drove.