The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that police need to obtain a warrant before placing a GPS device on a vehicle and using the tool to track a suspect.
District nightclub owner Antoine Jones had challenged his cocaine-distribution conviction, saying investigators violated his Fourth Amendment rights when they put a GPS device on his Jeep without a valid warrant and tracked his movements for a month.
Placing the GPS on the vehicle constitutes a search, which means a warrant is required, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in the court’s opinion.
“The Government physically occupied private property for the purpose of obtaining information,” Scalia wrote. He said that officers “encroached on a protected area” by putting the GPS on the Jeep.
The court said a warrant was necessary to install the GPS device, but didn’t address whether police need a warrant for prolonged monitoring if the GPS is already in the car or in another device like a cell phone.
All nine justices said a warrant was needed in Jones’ case, which was argued in November. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Sonia Sotomayor joined Scalia’s opinion. Sotomayor and Justice Samuel Alito wrote concurring opinions; Alito’s was joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan.
Jones’ case went to the Supreme Court after the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled in August 2010 that the warrantless monitoring violated Jones’ reasonable expectations of privacy. Other circuit courts have upheld similar GPS tracking
