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Supreme Court adopts new rules for cell phone tracking
Law Firm Press Release |
2018/06/24 17:10
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The Supreme Court says police generally need a search warrant if they want to track criminal suspects’ movements by collecting information about where they’ve used their cellphones. The justices’ 5-4 decision Friday is a victory for privacy in the digital age. Police collection of cellphone tower information has become an important tool in criminal investigations.
The outcome marks a big change in how police can obtain phone records. Authorities can go to the phone company and obtain information about the numbers dialed from a home telephone without presenting a warrant. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion, joined by the court’s four liberals. Roberts said the court’s decision is limited to cellphone tracking information and does not affect other business records, including those held by banks.
He also wrote that police still can respond to an emergency and obtain records without a warrant. Justices Anthony Kennedy, Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch dissented. Kennedy wrote that the court’s “new and uncharted course will inhibit law enforcement” and “keep defendants and judges guessing for years to come.”
The court ruled in the case of Timothy Carpenter, who was sentenced to 116 years in prison for his role in a string of robberies of Radio Shack and T-Mobile stores in Michigan and Ohio. Cell tower records that investigators got without a warrant bolstered the case against Carpenter. Investigators obtained the cell tower records with a court order that requires a lower standard than the “probable cause” needed to obtain a warrant. “Probable cause” requires strong evidence that a person has committed a crime.
The judge at Carpenter’s trial refused to suppress the records, finding no warrant was needed, and a federal appeals court agreed. The Trump administration said the lower court decisions should be upheld. The American Civil Liberties Union, representing Carpenter, said a warrant would provide protection against unjustified government snooping. The administration relied in part on a 1979 Supreme Court decision that treated phone records differently than the conversation in a phone call, for which a warrant generally is required.
In a case involving a single home telephone, the court said then that people had no expectation of privacy in the records of calls made and kept by the phone company. That case came to the court before the digital age, and the law on which prosecutors relied to obtain an order for Carpenter’s records dates from 1986, when few people had cellphones. The Supreme Court in recent years has acknowledged technology’s effects on privacy. In 2014, the court held unanimously that police must generally get a warrant to search the cellphones of people they arrest. Other items people carry with them may be looked at without a warrant, after an arrest.
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Oregon Supreme Court won't hear Sweet Cakes by Melissa appeal
Legal Information |
2018/06/22 22:18
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The Oregon Supreme Court has declined to consider the case of Sweet Cakes by Melissa, the now-defunct bakery that refused to make a wedding cake for a lesbian couple in 2013 based on the bakers' religious objections.
Melissa and Aaron Klein had been ordered to pay $135,000 to couple Rachel and Laurel Bowman-Cryer in emotional damages in 2015 after the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries found that the Kleins violated state anti-discrimination law.
The Oregon Court of Appeals has upheld the order. Bureau of Labor and Industries officials see the Oregon Supreme Court decision as an affirmation of the bureau's original order.
Lawyers for the Kleins said Friday they will appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
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Michigan court ends conflict over juvenile life sentences
Attorney Interview |
2018/06/21 08:58
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Judges, not juries, have the sole power to decide whether someone under 18 gets life in prison without parole, the Michigan Supreme Court said Wednesday.
The 4-2 decision settles a conflict at the state appeals court and clears the way for more than 200 new sentencing hearings for so-called juvenile lifers that have been on hold for more than a year.
The Supreme Court said there are no constitutional violations in allowing a judge to order a no-parole sentence for a teen. Chief Justice Stephen Markman, writing for the majority, said a trial judge doesn't need to find any particular fact before choosing the highest punishment.
The case landed at the Supreme Court after the Michigan appeals court in 2015 said a no-parole sentence for a minor would fit only if a jury finds that the crime is the result of "irreparable corruption," something so heinous that parole shouldn't apply. Markman, however, said the interpretation was wrong.
"If the trial court simply finds that there are no mitigating circumstances, it can sentence a juvenile to life without parole," he wrote.
Separately, many Michigan juvenile lifers who are serving no-parole sentences are eligible for a new hearing because of a U.S. Supreme Court decision. But those hearings were suspended while the state Supreme Court grappled with two cases that led to a decision Wednesday.
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High Court: Online shoppers can be forced to pay sales tax
Law Firm News |
2018/06/21 08:58
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The Supreme Court says states can force online shoppers to pay sales tax. The 5-4 ruling Thursday is a win for states, who said they were losing out on billions of dollars annually under two decades-old Supreme Court decisions that impacted online sales tax collection.
The high court ruled Thursday to overturn those decisions. They had resulted in some companies not collecting sales tax on every online purchase. The cases the court overturned said that if a business was shipping a product to a state where it didn't have a physical presence such as a warehouse or office, the business didn't have to collect the state's sales tax. Customers were generally supposed to pay the tax to the state themselves if they don't get charged it, but the vast majority didn't. Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote that the previous decisions were flawed.
"Each year the physical presence rule becomes further removed from economic reality and results in significant revenue losses to the States. These critiques underscore that the physical presence rule, both as first formulated and as applied today, is an incorrect interpretation of the Commerce Clause," he wrote.
In addition to being a win for states, the ruling is also a win for large retailers, who argued the physical presence rule was unfair. Retailers including Apple, Macy's, Target and Walmart, which have brick-and-mortar stores nationwide, generally collect sales tax from their customers who buy online. That's because they typically have a physical store in whatever state the purchase is being shipped to. Amazon.com, with its network of warehouses, also collects sales tax in every state that charges it, though third party sellers who use the site to sell goods don't have to.
But sellers that only have a physical presence in a single state or a few states could avoid charging customers sales tax when they're shipping to addresses outside those states. Online sellers that don't charge sales tax on goods shipped to every state range from jewelry website Blue Nile to pet products site Chewy.com to clothing retailer L.L. Bean. Sellers who use eBay and Etsy, which provide platforms for smaller sellers, also aren't required to collect sales tax nationwide.
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