When Can We Expect Privacy? | Katz v. United States

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In episode 54 of Supreme Court Briefs, a man illegally gambles on sports, and the FBI catch him in the act since they were spying on him on a payphone. Wait, can they do that? #supremecourtbriefs #4thamendment #privacy

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Los Angeles, California

February 25, 1965

Charles Katz makes a phone call at a public telephone booth near his apartment on Sunset Boulevard. Katz had made these calls to various states regularly for years. He was a professional gambler, mostly placing bets on college basketball games, and he would conduct his gambling business on these pay phones. Well, wouldn’t you know it...interstate sports gambling was illegal, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, aka the FBI, was spying on him. Yep, they were recording his conversations after installing hidden listening devices attached to the outside of the phone booth. Shortly after recording these conversations the FBI arrested him at his apartment. They charged him with eight counts of knowingly transmitting wagering information by phone between U.S. states. But there was one big problem with the FBI’s plan- the agents had not secured a search warrant before spying on Katz. And the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution states that, unless law enforcement officers have probable cause, they need a warrant to spy on a suspect. Wait, do they?

Well, perhaps the agents were not that worried since in the case Olmstead v. United States, the Supreme Court said that the Fourth Amendment did not apply to wiretapping phones to listen in on conversations. In fact, the Court determined that private phone conversations were basically no different from conversations overheard in a public area. Unless there was physical intrusion by law enforcement, it was ok, and this became known as the “trespass doctrine.”

So sorry Katz. But wait just a second, the Olmstead case was 37 years prior. Times had changed. Katz was like, “I’m fightin’ this.” In the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California, he tried to prevent the FBI’s phone booth recordings from being used as evidence since, ya know, they didn’t have a warrant. The judge denied the request, and Katz was convicted based on them.

With the help of a young lawyer named Harvey Schneider, Katz appealed his conviction to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, but it agreed with the lower court, so Katz appealed again to the Supreme Court, and they agreed to hear oral arguments on October 17, 1967. The biggest issue was, did Katz deserve privacy by stepping into the phone booth to make those calls?

The Court said “yes.” On December 18, 1967, it announced it had sided with Katz. It was 7-1. So yep, the Court overruled the Olmstead case and therefore overruled the trespass doctrine.

Justice Potter Stewart wrote the opinion. “The Fourth Amendment protects people, not places. What a person knowingly exposes to the public, even in his own home or office, is not a subject of Fourth Amendment protection. But what he seeks to preserve as private, even in an area accessible to the public, may be constitutionally protected.”