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Today: The Supreme Court issued three major decisions: ruling that geofence warrants violate the Fourth Amendment under the Carpenter precedent, upholding birthright citizenship for children of unlawful or temporary residents under the 14th Amendment, and splitting on agency independence by allowing presidential removal of FTC commissioners while protecting Federal Reserve governors. The First Circuit tightened Article III standing requirements in data breach cases by requiring plaintiffs to demonstrate temporal proximity and plausible traceability between the breach and their alleged identity theft injuries.
Supreme Court Declares Geofence Warrants Unconstitutional Fourth Amendment Searches
The Supreme Court ruled in the Okello Chatrie case that law enforcement conducts a Fourth Amendment search when acquiring location data from Google via geofence warrants, because individuals have a reasonable expectation of privacy in cell phone location information. The majority applied the 2018 Carpenter precedent, finding that Google Location History provides an even more detailed surveillance capability than cell site location information: it pinpoints location within 20 meters (versus one-eighth to four square miles for CSLI), records position every two minutes for approximately 720 daily chartings (versus 101 for CSLI), and estimates elevation to reveal which floor of a building a phone occupies. The Court rejected the government's third-party doctrine argument that users "voluntarily" relinquish location data, holding that geofence warrants function as general warrants that force Google to search everyone's location data on the government's behalf.
First Circuit Tightens Data Breach Standing Requirements in Santos-Pagán v. Bayamon Medical Center
The First Circuit affirmed dismissal of a class action arising from a 2019 ransomware attack on a Puerto Rico hospital affecting 522,493 patients, ruling that the plaintiff lacked Article III standing because she failed to plausibly allege traceability between the breach and her alleged injury. In Santos-Pagán v. Bayamon Medical Center, No. 24-2018, the plaintiff discovered a fraudulent cellphone account in her name more than four years after the incident but provided no allegations about when the account was opened, whether she had taken steps to secure her own PII to exclude alternative sources, or whether the specific PII exposed in the breach overlapped with information required to open a cellphone account. The unanimous panel held that the four-year gap between breach and injury discovery, combined with the absence of allegations about the plaintiff's own data security practices and the lack of factual overlap between exposed data and account-opening requirements, made the causation claim implausible at the pleading stage.
Supreme Court to Hear Challenges to Semiautomatic Rifle Bans
The Supreme Court granted certiorari in two consolidated cases challenging local bans on AR-15s and other semiautomatic rifles: Viramontes v. Cook County (Illinois) and Grant v. Higgins (Connecticut). The cases will be argued together in fall 2026. The Seventh Circuit previously upheld Cook County's ban in Bevis v. City of Naperville, ruling that plaintiffs had not shown the covered firearms materially differed from machine guns and military-grade weaponry, which the Supreme Court has held can be banned under the Second Amendment. Cook County argued the weapons' lethality deters effective law enforcement intervention during mass shootings and that the record contains no instances of lawful self-defense use of assault weapons. Connecticut enacted its ban following the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary shooting.
Supreme Court Splits on Presidential Removal Authority for Independent Agencies
The Supreme Court issued contradictory rulings on the same day regarding presidential authority to remove commissioners from independent agencies. In Trump v. Slaughter, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority overturning the 91-year-old Humphrey's Executor precedent and holding that the president can fire commissioners of independent agencies including the FTC, rejecting Congress's authority to create truly independent agencies insulated from partisan political influence. On the same day, in Trump v. Cook, Roberts wrote for the majority that the president cannot fire members of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, holding that Fed independence must be protected to prevent political manipulation of monetary policy and avoid the financial calamities that historically resulted from presidential interference with central banking. Roberts warned in Slaughter that agency independence would "destroy" executive unity, but in Cook expressed greater concern about stock market destruction and traced the Framers' awareness that "calamities" could arise from political manipulation of monetary policy.
Supreme Court Upholds Birthright Citizenship in Trump v. Barbara
The Supreme Court rejected the Trump administration's order ending birthright citizenship, holding that birth in the United States coupled with subjection to U.S. sovereign authority establishes citizenship under the 14th Amendment. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the 7,801-word majority opinion joined by Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, Jackson, and Barrett. Justices Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch dissented in opinions totaling 39,891 words (70.5% of all authored text), arguing for a more demanding allegiance requirement especially for children of temporary visitors and unlawfully present parents. The majority emphasized the territorial and common law framework from the founding, while dissents focused on domicile, exclusive allegiance, and immigration status. Justice Kavanaugh concurred in the judgment in part and dissented in part without joining the other dissents.
Supreme Court Rules on Transgender Athletics and Title IX
Justice Brett Kavanaugh authored the majority opinion in West Virginia v. B.P.J. and the consolidated case Little v. Hecox (Idaho), holding that Title IX allows schools to provide separate women's and men's sports teams defined by biological sex and that West Virginia and Idaho laws maintaining female sports for biological females do not violate Title IX or the 14th Amendment's equal protection clause. Kavanaugh emphasized that Title IX has "promoted equal opportunity for female student-athletes and has facilitated the extraordinary growth of women's and girls' sports over the last 54 years."
Location data requests: Law enforcement must obtain warrants based on probable cause for specific individuals before accessing historical location data. Geofence warrants seeking all devices in an area are now unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment and the Carpenter precedent.
Data breach litigation defense: In the First Circuit, plaintiffs must demonstrate temporal proximity between breach and injury, allege personal data security practices to exclude alternative sources, and show overlap between exposed data and fraud-enabling information. Move to dismiss under 12(b)(1) or 12(b)(6) when these elements are missing.
Independent agency regulatory planning: Organizations should anticipate reduced policy stability at independent agencies following the Trump v. Slaughter decision allowing presidential removal of commissioners. Enforcement priorities may shift more rapidly with administration changes.
Mail-in ballot procedures: States retain authority under Article II, Section 1, Clause 4 to determine vote-counting procedures including acceptance of absentee ballots postmarked by election day but received afterward. Federal election day statutes set when votes are cast, not when they must be received.
Fed independence vs. FTC exposure: The Supreme Court's contradictory rulings in Trump v. Cook (protecting Fed independence) and Trump v. Slaughter (allowing FTC commissioner removal) create regulatory uncertainty for organizations subject to independent agency oversight outside the financial sector.