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US Supreme Court to Decide Fourth Amendment Issue on Use of Cellphone Records to Reveal Location and Movements

In USA v . Carpenter, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals held that that the government’s collection of business records containing cell-site data was not a search under the Fourth Amendment.

In the case,  Timothy Carpenter and Timothy Sanders were convicted of nine armed robberies in violation of the Hobbs Act. The government’s evidence at trial included business records from the defendants’ wireless carriers, showing that each man used his cellphone within a half-mile to two miles of several robberies during the times the robberies occurred. The defendants argued that the government’s collection of those records constituted a warrantless search in violation of the Fourth Amendment. The Sixth Circuit rejected the Fourth Amendment argument. Two key distinctions the Sixth Circuit relied on in reaching its decision were: a)  the difference between the content of a communication and the information necessary to convey it; and, b) the difference between precise GPS tracking and the far less precise locational information that the government obtained in Carpenter.

The US Supreme Court will consider and decide the following issue:

Whether the warrantless seizure and search of historical cellphone records revealing the location and movements of a cellphone user over the course of 127 days is permitted by the Fourth Amendment?

Argument is scheduled for November 29, 2017. Watch this space for the outcome.

Matt Cairone
724-416-3261

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