While we were all focused on the health care argu­ments at the Supreme Court, sev­eral deci­sions were handed down in cases we pre­viewed here at Supreme Court Watch.

Max has already cov­ered FAA v. Cooper in his Sat­ur­day article.

Here are a few more that may have escaped your notice.

Flo­rence v. Board of Cho­sen Free­hold­ers of the County of Burlington

In Octo­ber, DC pre­viewed Flo­rence v. Board of Cho­sen Free­hold­ers of the County of Burling­ton [New Jer­sey]. Albert Flo­rence was stopped for a minor traf­fic offense but because of an admin­is­tra­tive error, he was believed to have out­stand­ing unpaid fines. As he was processed into the Flo­rence County jail, he was strip-​​searched, as is rou­tine for enter­ing pris­on­ers. He sued the Board of Free­hold­ers (i.e. the county gov­ern­ment) alleg­ing a vio­la­tion of his Fourth Amend­ment rights.

The right of the peo­ple to be secure in their per­sons, houses, papers, and effects, against unrea­son­able searches and seizures, shall not be vio­lated, and no War­rants shall issue, but upon prob­a­ble cause, sup­ported by Oath or affir­ma­tion, and par­tic­u­larly describ­ing the place to be searched, and the per­sons or things to be seized.

In a 5–4 deci­sion (Breyer, Gins­burg, Kagan, and Sotomayor dis­sent­ing) on April 2, the Court held that Mr. Flo­rence was treated prop­erly, since the need to pro­vide for secu­rity of the inmates and work­ers in pris­ons out­weighs an individual’s Fourth Amend­ment rights. In other words, the search was deemed “rea­son­able” by the Court.

Ziv­otof­sky v. Clinton

In Novem­ber, I wrote up the argu­ment pre­view in Ziv­otof­sky v. Clin­ton (also known as MBZ v. Clin­ton). Con­gress passed a law in 2002 that stip­u­lated Jerusalem as the capi­tol of Israel. Pres­i­dent George W. Bush signed the law (which was part of a much larger, “must-​​pass” bill) but issued a sign­ing state­ment refus­ing to let the Exec­u­tive enforce the law. Pres­i­dent Obama and his Sec­re­tary of State Hillary Clin­ton have sim­i­larly refused to fol­low the law. Men­achem Ziv­otof­sky was born in Jerusalem in 2002, after the bill was passed and signed. His par­ents want “Jerusalem, Israel” on his pass­port, while the State Depart­ment wants to put sim­ply, “Jerusalem”.

The Court side­stepped the geopo­lit­i­cal issues but gave them back to the lower Fed­eral courts. By an 8–1 vote, the Court said lower Fed­eral courts were com­pe­tent to decide the spe­cific polit­i­cal issue (the sta­tus of Jerusalem) cre­ated by the con­flict between the Exec­u­tive and Leg­isla­tive, while refus­ing to say whether sign­ing state­ments are a Con­sti­tu­tional exer­cise of Exec­u­tive authority.

U.S. v. Jones

DC pre­viewed U.S. v. Jones, in which a sus­pected drug dealer was tracked using a GPS mounted to his vehi­cle. The vote was com­plex, with dif­fer­ent jus­tices affirm­ing or dis­sent­ing on dif­fer­ent parts of the opin­ion. Over­all, though, the Court decided that Jones’ Fourth Amend­ment rights had been vio­lated.

While mul­ti­ple media out­lets have hailed the deci­sion as an affir­ma­tion of a citizen’s pri­vacy right to be free from police GPS track­ing, Tom Gold­stein at SCO­TUS­blog argues that they’ve got it wrong. Accord­ing to Gold­stein, the vote breaks down as fol­lows (“gov­ern­ment” argues that it’s not a search; “defen­dant” argues that it is a search and requires a warrant):

(i) instal­la­tion is a search:  gov­ern­ment wins 9–0;

(ii) short-​​term mon­i­tor­ing alone using some tech­nol­ogy is a search: gov­ern­ment wins 8–1;

(iii) com­bi­na­tion of instal­la­tion and mon­i­tor­ing is a search: defen­dant wins 5–4;

(iv) long-​​term mon­i­tor­ing using some tech­nol­ogy is a search: defen­dant wins with at least 5 votes, with the remain­ing Jus­tices not address­ing the issue.

In other words, Gold­stein argues, only under the cir­cum­stances spe­cific to this case was the instal­la­tion of a GPS device on a vehi­cle a “search” sub­ject to the Fourth Amend­ment require­ment of a valid search warrant.

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