fourth amendment

Federal Court Allows Protesters’ First Amendment Suit Against Violent Boston Cops To Continue 18 July 2022 A lawsuit filed by four protesters against three Boston police officers can move forward, following a federal judge’s determination that the cops’ counterarguments were too ridiculous to...

One Way To Lose Judicial Immunity: Perform Impromptu Warrantless Searches Of People’s Houses 20 July 2022 Judicial immunity is one of a handful of absolute immunities. Like the name suggests, absolute immunity is a pretty tough shield to pierce. Every so often, someone will do something...

Court Suppresses Phone Search, Telling Cops A Warrant With No Probable Cause Is Like Having No Warrant At All 22 July 2022 Not every crime is linked to a cell phone, no matter what cops may think. True, cell phones are omnibuses of information, containing overflowing email inboxes, social...

Homeland Security Is Buying Its Way Around the Fourth Amendment 19 July 2022 American taxpayers pay to be spied upon. That's one takeaway from new documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which has been examining how federal agents spent millions to purchase massive...

Pennsylvania Poaching Police Warrantlessly Installed Camera on Private Land To Surveil Hunting Club Evidence turned over in a lawsuit shows that wildlife officers set up a trail camera at a private club to surveil hunters who may be breaking state laws. 28 July 2022 Police can increasingly...

Which Is More Scandalous: The Training for Armed Teachers or the Training for Police Officers? On average, the minimum requirement for cops is about 650 hours, compared to about 1,300 hours for barbers. 1 August 2022 A recent New York Times story about armed teachers casts doubt on the...

Michigan Supreme Court Says Photographing, Fingerprinting People Without Probable Cause Is Unconstitutional 1 August 2022 The only surprise in this decision isn’t that the court ruled the way it did. It’s that the Grand Rapids, Michigan police department apparently believed it wasn’t a...

New Jersey Cops Are Using DNA Drawn From Newborns In Criminal Investigations 8 August 2022 To be in law enforcement is to be almost criminally obtuse. (We haven’t criminalized that. YET! But when we do…) They can’t stay out of their own way. The public may be willing to cut them some slack...

Ehhh???? Springfield, Missouri, officer Zach "Car Frisker" Pugh Appeals Court: ‘Frisking’ A Vehicle Is Completely Normal And Not Any Sort Of Rights Violation 9 August 2022 Welcome to America, where not only are people subject to frisks by cops when things seem reasonably suspicious, but...

Sabine County, Texas, deputy stud David Boyd Fifth Circuit: This Badge Wearing Serial Sexual Assaulter Is Beyond Even Our Expansive Definition Of Qualified Immunity 2 August 2022 Yikes. Deputy Boyd stayed for approximately two hours, during which time he made numerous inappropriate sexual...

Sixth Circuit Says All Animals Are Equal, But Cop Animals Are More Equal Than Others 11 July 2022 Cops kill pets. This is an inarguable fact. None other than the US Department of Justice has declared the (unofficial) War on Dogs to be a law enforcement epidemic. If a cop encounters a family...

Reverse Keyword Warrant Challenged After Cops Asked Google To Search Millions Of People’s Data Multiple Times 11 July 2022 Cops have been running to Google for years, warrants and subpoenas in hand, asking the data behemoth to give them info they can sift through to find criminal suspects...

Kentucky Supreme Court Says Warrants Are Needed For Real-Time Cell Location Pings 1 July 2022 In 2018, the Supreme Court declared warrantless access to historical cell site location information unconstitutional, given the privacy implications of being able to track someone’s movements over...

Utah Cops Used ‘Reverse Warrants’ To Track Down A Bunch Of Petty Criminals 31 May 2022 Whenever cops discover a new means or method of tracking people that seems to run afoul of the letter (if not the spirit) of the Fourth Amendment, they’re quick to defend these actions by claiming they’re...

US Postal Service Sued For Seizing ‘Defund Police’ Facemasks 6 June 2022 Two years ago, just as the COVID pandemic was beginning to radically transform day-to-day life for nearly everyone on the planet, the United States Postal Service decided to protect cops from passive criticism. One month...

Appeals Court Says It’s Perfectly Fine For Cops To Unreasonably Extend Traffic Stops 3 June 2022 The Supreme Court made it pretty clear in its Rodriguez decision that pretextual traffic stops were fine, but once the pretext evaporated, it was time to cut civilians loose. We hold that a...

Taylor County, Wisconsin, sheriff Bruce Daniels (left) & Taylor County, Wisconsin, deputy/sgt. Steven Bowers (right) Federal Court Awards Immunity To Sheriff Who Searched An Officer’s Private Dropbox Account Without A Warrant 22 April 2022 Law enforcement officers are more used to...

DC Federal Court Says Lying Amtrak Officer Can’t Have His Inconsistent Statements And His Evidence Too 1 April 2022 Cops lie. It’s a fact. It’s called testilying and it happens so often hardly anyone can even be bothered to act surprised when these lies are exposed. This case — coming to us...

Won't fly, this is no different than the Los Angeles ordinance mandating warrantless access to hotel/motel registration records, which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional: The Supreme Court has struck down a Los Angeles ordinance that permits the police to check guest registries at...

Law Prof Suggests Geofence Warrants Are A Net Gain For The Public, Even If They Invert The Probable Cause Standard 5 April 2022 On March 9th, we covered a Virginia court’s decision to reject a geofence/”reverse” warrant as unconstitutional. This was brought to our attention by...