Supreme Court of the United States, Riley v. California

In June 2014, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a landmark ruling regarding cell phones and privacy, addressing the question of whether law enforcement officials could search the cell phone of someone who has been arrested without first obtaining a warrant to do so. With its decision that such warrantless searches are unconstitutional, the court redefined the criteria for balancing the competing interests of law enforcement officials, on the one hand, and individuals who own cell phones and who are concerned about their privacy, on the other. The excerpt of the ruling included here gives you an opportunity to see the arguments made by the court about privacy as it relates to cell phones while examining how legal argumentation works generally.

As will become immediately clear when you begin reading, legal discourse seems to be a world of its own. In the next few paragraphs, we try to give you a road map to help you understand this legal ruling and legal discourse generally, particularly its system of documentation. We hope this information will help you see the ways that legal opinions represent stasis theory in action. Their structure is completely predictable. After stating the legal question at issue, they move to an argument of fact in which the relevant facts of the case are presented, then an argument of definition in which the relevant laws and prior legal rulings are reviewed, followed by an evaluative argument in which the facts of the case are evaluated in light of the law, and, finally, a holding, or judgment, along with the reasoning behind that judgment.

With regard to this specific ruling, the court examined two cases that pose the same question: whether the police can legally search an individual’s cell phone without having a warrant to do so. The first case, from which the ruling takes its name, Riley v. California, involves events that occurred in 2009. The relevant details of this case are included in the excerpt below. In court cases, the plaintiff, or complaining party who has filed the lawsuit, also called the petitioner, is named first while the defendant, or party being sued, is named second. In the original case, David Riley sued the State of California. (Often, in writing and conversation, the case is simply referred to as Riley if there is no chance of confusion.)

The second case the court considered in this ruling is U.S. v. Brima Wurie. The details of this are relevant to understanding this excerpt. In this case, the police stopped Brima Wurie in 2007 for making what appeared to be a drug sale while he was in his car. They also confiscated two cell phones, one of which was an older flip phone. Using information found on this older phone, the police were able to locate Wurie’s home address, obtain a search warrant, and seize “215 grams of crack cocaine, marijuana, drug paraphernalia, a firearm, and ammunition.” Wurie was later sentenced to nearly twenty-two years in prison for crimes relating to the drug sale and the seized drugs and firearms. During Wurie’s trial, his attorneys argued that information obtained from the search of their client’s apartment should not be admissible because the seizure of his cell phones was illegal under the Fourth Amendment. which prevents unreasonable seizures. The district court rejected this argument and permitted information obtained from the search to be heard at trial. Wurie appealed his case on the grounds that the district court’s ruling on this issue was faulty.

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The appeals court overturned the decision of the district court, agreeing with Wurie that the information obtained from the search of his apartment should not have been heard in court. Thus, Wurie’s sentence was dropped. In its ruling, the appeals court argued that cell phones cannot be searched without a warrant because unlike the other sorts of possessions a person might have on his/her body — a wallet, a note, or a piece of mail — all of which can be searched without a warrant, cell phones can contain far more personal data than these other items.

After Wurie won the appeal, the case was appealed to the Supreme Court, whose decision is binding and becomes the law of the land. The U.S. Department of Justice considered the question of whether cell phones could be searched without a warrant to be an important legal issue and, therefore, became part of the case. When the United States appealed this case to the Supreme Court, the court ultimately accepted the appeals court’s argument and built upon it, as you will see in the excerpt.

As you read this excerpt from Riley v. California, consider how this redefinition of the nature of privacy with regard to cell phones has consequences for you and your legal rights as well as how it illustrates the power of stasis theory and argument to change the nature of what we experience as reality.

A Word about Legal Documentation

The legal profession uses a system of documenting sources that is all its own. Although you do not need to understand the details, the following observations may help you appreciate how the system works as well as how legal professionals provide support for their claims.

First, there are many references to laws, earlier court decisions, or to other relevant sources. These will often be introduced by “See” or “Compare” as in the example “See Cal. Penal Code Ann. §§12025(a)(1), 12031(a)(1) (West 2009)” (paragraph 3), which refers the reader to specific sections of the California Penal Code as annotated by Thomson West. You’ll also find abbreviations you may not be familiar with: App. (appendix), supra (cited above), and Id. (the previous cited reference). While you can ignore the specifics of such citations, pay attention to the frequency with which they occur. In some legal writing, every sentence will be followed by a citation to various laws, previous court rulings, or other reliable sources of information.

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Finally, the version of the ruling excerpted here is a slip opinion. Slip opinions represent an early stage in a ruling becoming official; in other words, they are semi-official drafts, issued shortly after a ruling, allowing for its broad dissemination. They are, however, subject to correction, which includes the addition of official case reference and page numbers. The court later compiles the corrected version of the ruling along with other rulings from the same period into a bound volume, at which point the ruling becomes fully official. Because slip opinions have no case numbers or page numbers, you’ll see earlier slip opinions cited in this ruling in the following way: “See United States v. Jones, 565 U.S. ___, ___ (2012) (SOTOMAYOR, J., concurring) (slip op., at 3).” Interestingly, legal professionals use “at” to mean “on page.”

Opinion of the Court

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

Nos. 13–132 and 13–212

DAVID LEON RILEY, PETITIONER

13–132 v.

CALIFORNIA

ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE COURT OF APPEAL OF CALIFORNIA, FOURTH APPELLATE DISTRICT, DIVISION ONE

UNITED STATES, PETITIONER

13–212 v.

BRIMA WURIE

ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FIRST CIRCUIT

[June 25, 2014]

CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS delivered the opinion of the Court.

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These two cases raise a common question: whether the police may, without a warrant, search digital information on a cell phone seized from an individual who has been arrested.

I

A

In the first case, petitioner David Riley was stopped by a police officer for driving with expired registration tags. In the course of the stop, the officer also learned that Riley’s license had been suspended. The officer impounded Riley’s car, pursuant to department policy, and another officer conducted an inventory search of the car. Riley was arrested for possession of concealed and loaded firearms when that search turned up two handguns under the car’s hood. See Cal. Penal Code Ann. §§12025(a)(1), 12031(a)(1) (West 2009).

An officer searched Riley incident to the arrest and found items associated with the “Bloods” street gang. He also seized a cell phone from Riley’s pants pocket. According to Riley’s uncontradicted assertion, the phone was a “smart phone,” a cell phone with a broad range of other functions based on advanced computing capability, large storage capacity, and Internet connectivity. The officer accessed information on the phone and noticed that some words (presumably in text messages or a contacts list) were preceded by the letters “CK” — a label that, he believed, stood for “Crip Killers,” a slang term for members of the Bloods gang.

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5 At the police station about two hours after the arrest, a detective specializing in gangs further examined the contents of the phone. The detective testified that he “went through” Riley’s phone “looking for evidence, because . . . gang members will often video themselves with guns or take pictures of themselves with the guns.” App. in No. 13–132, p. 20. Although there was “a lot of stuff” on the phone, particular files that “caught [the detective’s] eye” included videos of young men sparring while someone yelled encouragement using the moniker “Blood.” Id., at 11–13. The police also found photographs of Riley standing in front of a car they suspected had been involved in a shooting a few weeks earlier.

Riley was ultimately charged, in connection with that earlier shooting, with firing at an occupied vehicle, assault with a semiautomatic firearm, and attempted murder. The State alleged that Riley had committed those crimes for the benefit of a criminal street gang, an aggravating factor that carries an enhanced sentence. Compare Cal. Penal Code Ann. §246 (2008) with §186.22(b)(4)(B) (2014). Prior to trial, Riley moved to suppress all evidence that the police had obtained from his cell phone. He contended that the searches of his phone violated the Fourth Amendment, because they had been performed without a warrant and were not otherwise justified by exigent circumstances. The trial court rejected that argument. App. in No. 13–132, at 24, 26. At Riley’s trial, police officers testified about the photographs and videos found on the phone, and some of the photographs were admitted into evidence. Riley was convicted on all three counts and received an enhanced sentence of fifteen years to life in prison.

[. . .]

II

The Fourth Amendment provides:

“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.”

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As the text makes clear, “the ultimate touchstone of the Fourth Amendment is ‘reasonableness.’ ” Brigham City v. Stuart, 547 U. S. 398, 403 (2006). Our cases have determined that “[w]here a search is undertaken by law enforcement officials to discover evidence of criminal wrongdoing, . . . reasonableness generally requires the obtaining of a judicial warrant.” Vernonia School Dist. 47J v. Acton, 515 U. S. 646, 653 (1995). Such a warrant ensures that the inferences to support a search are “drawn by a neutral and detached magistrate instead of being judged by the officer engaged in the often competitive enterprise of ferreting out crime.” Johnson v. United States, 333 U. S. 10, 14 (1948). In the absence of a warrant, a search is reasonable only if it falls within a specific exception to the warrant requirement. See Kentucky v. King, 563 U. S. ___, ___ (2011) (slip op., at 5–6).

The two cases before us concern the reasonableness of a warrantless search incident to a lawful arrest. In 1914, this Court first acknowledged in dictum “the right on the part of the Government, always recognized under English and American law, to search the person of the accused when legally arrested to discover and seize the fruits or evidences of crime.” Weeks v. United States, 232 U. S. 383, 392. Since that time, it has been well accepted that such a search constitutes an exception to the warrant requirement. Indeed, the label “exception” is something of a misnomer in this context, as warrantless searches incident to arrest occur with far greater frequency than searches conducted pursuant to a warrant. See 3 W. LaFave, Search and Seizure §5.2(b), p. 132, and n. 15 (5th ed. 2012).

10Although the existence of the exception for such searches has been recognized for a century, its scope has been debated for nearly as long. See Arizona v. Gant, 556 U. S. 332, 350 (2009) (noting the exception’s “checkered” history). That debate has focused on the extent to which officers may search property found on or near the arrestee. Three related precedents set forth the rules governing such searches:

The first, Chimel v. California, 395 U. S. 752 (1969), laid the groundwork for most of the existing search incident to arrest doctrine. Police officers in that case arrested Chimel inside his home and proceeded to search his entire three-bedroom house, including the attic and garage. In particular rooms, they also looked through the contents of drawers. Id., at 753–754.

The Court crafted the following rule for assessing the reasonableness of a search incident to arrest:

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“When an arrest is made, it is reasonable for the arresting officer to search the person arrested in order to remove any weapons that the latter might seek to use in order to resist arrest or effect his escape. Otherwise, the officer’s safety might well be endangered, and the arrest itself frustrated. In addition, it is entirely reasonable for the arresting officer to search for and seize any evidence on the arrestee’s person in order to prevent its concealment or destruction. . . . There is ample justification, therefore, for a search of the arrestee’s person and the area ‘within his immediate control’ — construing that phrase to mean the area from within which he might gain possession of a weapon or destructible evidence.” Id., at 762–763.

The extensive warrantless search of Chimel’s home did not fit within this exception, because it was not needed to protect officer safety or to preserve evidence. Id., at 763, 768.

Four years later, in United States v. Robinson, 414 U. S. 218 (1973), the Court applied the Chimel analysis in the context of a search of the arrestee’s person. A police officer had arrested Robinson for driving with a revoked license. The officer conducted a patdown search and felt an object that he could not identify in Robinson’s coat pocket. He removed the object, which turned out to be a crumpled cigarette package, and opened it. Inside were 14 capsules of heroin. Id., at 220, 223.

[. . .]

The Court thus concluded that the search of Robinson was reasonable even though there was no concern about the loss of evidence, and the arresting officer had no specific concern that Robinson might be armed. Id., at 236. In doing so, the Court did not draw a line between a search of Robinson’s person and a further examination of the cigarette pack found during that search. It merely noted that, “[h]aving in the course of a lawful search come upon the crumpled package of cigarettes, [the officer] was entitled to inspect it.” Ibid. A few years later, the Court clarified that this exception was limited to “personal property . . . immediately associated with the person of the arrestee.” United States v. Chadwick, 433 U. S. 1, 15 (1977) (200-pound, locked footlocker could not be searched incident to arrest), abrogated on other grounds by California v. Acevedo, 500 U. S. 565 (1991).

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III

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15 These cases require us to decide how the search incident to arrest doctrine applies to modern cell phones, which are now such a pervasive and insistent part of daily life that the proverbial visitor from Mars might conclude they were an important feature of human anatomy. A smartphone of the sort taken from Riley was unheard of ten years ago; a significant majority of American adults now own such phones. See A. Smith, Pew Research Center, Smartphone Ownership — 2013 Update (June 5, 2013). Even less sophisticated phones like Wurie’s, which have already faded in popularity since Wurie was arrested in 2007, have been around for less than fifteen years. Both phones are based on technology nearly inconceivable just a few decades ago, when Chimel and Robinson were decided.

Absent more precise guidance from the founding era, we generally determine whether to exempt a given type of search from the warrant requirement “by assessing, on the one hand, the degree to which it intrudes upon an individual’s privacy and, on the other, the degree to which it is needed for the promotion of legitimate governmental interests.” Wyoming v. Houghton, 526 U. S. 295, 300 (1999). Such a balancing of interests supported the search incident to arrest exception in Robinson, and a mechanical application of Robinson might well support the warrantless searches at issue here.

But while Robinson’s categorical rule strikes the appropriate balance in the context of physical objects, neither of its rationales has much force with respect to digital content on cell phones. On the government interest side, Robinson concluded that the two risks identified in Chimel — harm to officers and destruction of evidence — are present in all custodial arrests. There are no comparable risks when the search is of digital data. In addition, Robinson regarded any privacy interests retained by an individual after arrest as significantly diminished by the fact of the arrest itself. Cell phones, however, place vast quantities of personal information literally in the hands of individuals. A search of the information on a cell phone bears little resemblance to the type of brief physical search considered in Robinson.

We therefore decline to extend Robinson to searches of data on cell phones, and hold instead that officers must generally secure a warrant before conducting such a search.

[. . .]

Digital data stored on a cell phone cannot itself be used as a weapon to harm an arresting officer or to effectuate the arrestee’s escape. Law enforcement officers remain free to examine the physical aspects of a phone to ensure that it will not be used as a weapon — say, to determine whether there is a razor blade hidden between the phone and its case. Once an officer has secured a phone and eliminated any potential physical threats, however, data on the phone can endanger no one.

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20 Perhaps the same might have been said of the cigarette pack seized from Robinson’s pocket. Once an officer gained control of the pack, it was unlikely that Robinson could have accessed the pack’s contents. But unknown physical objects may always pose risks, no matter how slight, during the tense atmosphere of a custodial arrest. The officer in Robinson testified that he could not identify the objects in the cigarette pack but knew they were not cigarettes. See 414 U. S., at 223, 236, n. 7. Given that, a further search was a reasonable protective measure. No such unknowns exist with respect to digital data. As the First Circuit explained, the officers who searched Wurie’s cell phone “knew exactly what they would find therein: data. They also knew that the data could not harm them.” 728 F. 3d, at 10.

[. . .]

The United States [as petitioner in U.S. v. Wurie] asserts that a search of all data stored on a cell phone is “materially indistinguishable” from searches of these sorts of physical items. Brief for United States in No. 13–212, p. 26. That is like saying a ride on horseback is materially indistinguishable from a flight to the moon. Both are ways of getting from point A to point B, but little else justifies lumping them together. Modern cell phones, as a category, implicate privacy concerns far beyond those implicated by the search of a cigarette pack, a wallet, or a purse. A conclusion that inspecting the contents of an arrestee’s pockets works no substantial additional intrusion on privacy beyond the arrest itself may make sense as applied to physical items, but any extension of that reasoning to digital data has to rest on its own bottom.

[. . .]

Cell phones differ in both a quantitative and a qualitative sense from other objects that might be kept on an arrestee’s person. The term “cell phone” is itself misleading shorthand; many of these devices are in fact minicomputers that also happen to have the capacity to be used as a telephone. They could just as easily be called cameras, video players, rolodexes, calendars, tape recorders, libraries, diaries, albums, televisions, maps, or newspapers. One of the most notable distinguishing features of modern cell phones is their immense storage capacity. Before cell phones, a search of a person was limited by physical realities and tended as a general matter to constitute only a narrow intrusion on privacy. See Kerr, Foreword: Accounting for Technological Change, 36 Harv. J. L. & Pub. Pol’y 403, 404–405 (2013). Most people cannot lug around every piece of mail they have received for the past several months, every picture they have taken, or every book or article they have read — nor would they have any reason to attempt to do so. And if they did, they would have to drag behind them a trunk of the sort held to require a search warrant in Chadwick, supra, rather than a container the size of the cigarette package in Robinson.

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But the possible intrusion on privacy is not physically limited in the same way when it comes to cell phones. The current top-selling smartphone has a standard capacity of 16 gigabytes (and is available with up to 64 gigabytes). Sixteen gigabytes translates to millions of pages of text, thousands of pictures, or hundreds of videos. See Kerr, supra, at 404; Brief for Center for Democracy & Technology et al. as Amici Curiae 7–8. Cell phones couple that capacity with the ability to store many different types of information: Even the most basic phones that sell for less than twenty dollars might hold photographs, picture messages, text messages, Internet browsing history, a calendar, a thousand-entry phone book, and so on. See Id., at 30; United States v. Flores-Lopez, 670 F. 3d 803, 806 (CA7 2012). We expect that the gulf between physical practicability and digital capacity will only continue to widen in the future.

The storage capacity of cell phones has several interrelated consequences for privacy. First, a cell phone collects in one place many distinct types of information — an address, a note, a prescription, a bank statement, a video — that reveal much more in combination than any isolated record. Second, a cell phone’s capacity allows even just one type of information to convey far more than previously possible. The sum of an individual’s private life can be reconstructed through a thousand photographs labeled with dates, locations, and descriptions; the same cannot be said of a photograph or two of loved ones tucked into a wallet. Third, the data on a phone can date back to the purchase of the phone, or even earlier. A person might carry in his pocket a slip of paper reminding him to call Mr. Jones; he would not carry a record of all his communications with Mr. Jones for the past several months, as would routinely be kept on a phone. ¹

25 Finally, there is an element of pervasiveness that characterizes cell phones but not physical records. Prior to the digital age, people did not typically carry a cache of sensitive personal information with them as they went about their day. Now it is the person who is not carrying a cell phone, with all that it contains, who is the exception. According to one poll, nearly three-quarters of smartphone users report being within five feet of their phones most of the time, with 12% admitting that they even use their phones in the shower. See Harris Interactive, 2013 Mobile Consumer Habits Study (June 2013). A decade ago police officers searching an arrestee might have occasionally stumbled across a highly personal item such as a diary. See, e.g., United States v. Frankenberry, 387 F. 2d 337 (CA2 1967) (per curiam). But those discoveries were likely to be few and far between. Today, by contrast, it is no exaggeration to say that many of the more than 90% of American adults who own a cell phone keep on their person a digital record of nearly every aspect of their lives — from the mundane to the intimate. See Ontario v. Quon, 560 U. S. 746, 760 (2010). Allowing the police to scrutinize such records on a routine basis is quite different from allowing them to search a personal item or two in the occasional case.

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Although the data stored on a cell phone is distinguished from physical records by quantity alone, certain types of data are also qualitatively different. An Internet search and browsing history, for example, can be found on an Internet-enabled phone and could reveal an individual’s private interests or concerns — perhaps a search for certain symptoms of disease, coupled with frequent visits to WebMD. Data on a cell phone can also reveal where a person has been. Historic location information is a standard feature on many smartphones and can reconstruct someone’s specific movements down to the minute, not only around town but also within a particular building. See United States v. Jones, 565 U. S. ___, ___ (2012) (SOTOMAYOR, J., concurring) (slip op., at 3) (“GPS monitoring generates a precise, comprehensive record of a person’s public movements that reflects a wealth of detail about her familial, political, professional, religious, and sexual associations.”).

Mobile application software on a cell phone, or “apps,” offer a range of tools for managing detailed information about all aspects of a person’s life. There are apps for Democratic Party news and Republican Party news; apps for alcohol, drug, and gambling addictions; apps for sharing prayer requests; apps for tracking pregnancy symptoms; apps for planning your budget; apps for every conceivable hobby or pastime; apps for improving your romantic life. There are popular apps for buying or selling just about anything, and the records of such transactions may be accessible on the phone indefinitely. There are over a million apps available in each of the two major app stores; the phrase “there’s an app for that” is now part of the popular lexicon. The average smartphone user has installed thirty-three apps, which together can form a revealing montage of the user’s life. See Brief for Electronic Privacy Information Center as Amicus Curiae in No. 13–132, p. 9.

In 1926, Learned Hand observed (in an opinion later quoted in Chimel) that it is “a totally different thing to search a man’s pockets and use against him what they contain, from ransacking his house for everything which may incriminate him.” United States v. Kirschenblatt, 16 F. 2d 202, 203 (CA2). If his pockets contain a cell phone, however, that is no longer true. Indeed, a cell phone search would typically expose to the government far more than the most exhaustive search of a house: A phone not only contains in digital form many sensitive records previously found in the home; it also contains a broad array of private information never found in a home in any form — unless the phone is.

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[. . .]

IV

We cannot deny that our decision today will have an impact on the ability of law enforcement to combat crime. Cell phones have become important tools in facilitating coordination and communication among members of criminal enterprises, and can provide valuable incriminating information about dangerous criminals. Privacy comes at a cost. Our holding, of course, is not that the information on a cell phone is immune from search; it is instead that a warrant is generally required before such a search, even when a cell phone is seized incident to arrest. Our cases have historically recognized that the warrant requirement is “an important working part of our machinery of government,” not merely “an inconvenience to be somehow ‘weighed’ against the claims of police efficiency.” Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403 U. S. 443, 481 (1971). Recent technological advances similar to those discussed here have, in addition, made the process of obtaining a warrant itself more efficient. See McNeely, 569 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 11–12); id., at ___ (ROBERTS, C. J., concurring in part and dissenting in part) (slip op., at 8) (describing jurisdiction where “police officers can e-mail warrant requests to judges’ iPads [and] judges have signed such warrants and e-mailed them back to officers in less than fifteen minutes”).

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* * *

30 Our cases have recognized that the Fourth Amendment was the founding generation’s response to the reviled “general warrants” and “writs of assistance” of the colonial era, which allowed British officers to rummage through homes in an unrestrained search for evidence of criminal activity. Opposition to such searches was in fact one of the driving forces behind the Revolution itself. In 1761, the patriot James Otis delivered a speech in Boston denouncing the use of writs of assistance. A young John Adams was there, and he would later write that “[e]very man of a crowded audience appeared to me to go away, as I did, ready to take arms against writs of assistance.” 10 Works of John Adams 247–248 (C. Adams ed. 1856). According to Adams, Otis’s speech was “the first scene of the first act of opposition to the arbitrary claims of Great Britain. Then and there the child Independence was born.” Id., at 248 (quoted in Boyd v. United States, 116 U. S. 616, 625 (1886)).

Modern cell phones are not just another technological convenience. With all they contain and all they may reveal, they hold for many Americans “the privacies of life,” Boyd, supra, at 630. The fact that technology now allows an individual to carry such information in his hand does not make the information any less worthy of the protection for which the Founders fought. Our answer to the question of what police must do before searching a cell phone seized incident to an arrest is accordingly simple — get a warrant.

We reverse the judgment of the California Court of Appeal in No. 13–132 and remand the case for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion. We affirm the judgment of the First Circuit in No. 13–212.

It is so ordered.

Opinion of ALITO, J.

JUSTICE ALITO, concurring in part and concurring in the judgment.

35 I agree with the Court that law enforcement officers, in conducting a lawful search incident to arrest, must generally obtain a warrant before searching information stored or accessible on a cell phone. I write separately to address two points [only one of which is included here].

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B

Despite my view on the point discussed above, I agree that we should not mechanically apply the rule used in the predigital era to the search of a cell phone. Many cell phones now in use are capable of storing and accessing a quantity of information, some highly personal, that no person would ever have had on his person in hard-copy form. This calls for a new balancing of law enforcement and privacy interests. The Court strikes this balance in favor of privacy interests with respect to all cell phones and all information found in them, and this approach leads to anomalies. For example, the Court’s broad holding favors information in digital form over information in hard-copy form. Suppose that two suspects are arrested. Suspect number one has in his pocket a monthly bill for his land-line phone, and the bill lists an incriminating call to a long-distance number. He also has in his wallet a few snapshots, and one of these is incriminating. Suspect number two has in his pocket a cell phone, the call log of which shows a call to the same incriminating number. In addition, a number of photos are stored in the memory of the cell phone, and one of these is incriminating. Under established law, the police may seize and examine the phone bill and the snapshots in the wallet without obtaining a warrant, but under the Court’s holding today, the information stored in the cell phone is out.

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While the Court’s approach leads to anomalies, I do not see a workable alternative. Law enforcement officers need clear rules regarding searches incident to arrest, and it would take many cases and many years for the courts to develop more nuanced rules. And during that time, the nature of the electronic devices that ordinary Americans carry on their persons would continue to change.

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RESPOND •

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