The Supreme Court of the United States announced decisions in four cases today:
Ryburn v. Huff, No. 11-208: Police officers went to a student’s house investigating allegations of threats made by the student to “shoot up the school.” In the course of the investigation but while still outside the house, the officers came to the conclusion that there was an objectively reasonable basis for fearing that violence was imminent, and accordingly entered the house without a warrant. The Supreme Court today concluded that entry was reasonable under the circumstances, and in a per curiam decision reversed the Ninth Circuit’s decision to the contrary.
The Court’s opinion is available
here.
National Meat Association v. Harris, No. 10-224: The Federal Meat Inspection Act regulates a broad range of activities at slaughterhouses to ensure the safety of meat and the humane handling of animals. It also expressly preempts state laws that are “in addition to, or different than” federal requirements. California passed a state law making it a criminal offense for slaughterhouses to receive, process, or sell meat from nonambulatory animals, instead requiring their immediate euthanization without further inspection. Federal law, however, requires further inspection and permits use if such inspections are passed. An association of federally-inspected swine slaughterhouses sued, and a federal district court enjoined the state law as preempted, but the Ninth Circuit reversed. Today the Supreme Court unanimously reversed the Ninth Circuit and held the state law preempted by the FMIA.
The Court’s opinion is available
here.
Reynolds v. United States, No. 10-6549: The federal Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act requires convicted sex offenders to provide and update certain information, e.g., names and current addresses, for state and federal sex offender registries. It is a crime if a person who is “required to register under [the Act]” and who “travels in interstate . . . commerce” knowingly “fails to register or update a registration.” Petitioner, a pre-Act offender, challenged that requirement as it applied to him, and the Court today held the Act does not require pre-Act offenders to register before the Attorney General validly specifies, as provided for in the Act, that the Act’s registration provisions apply to them.
The Court’s decision is available
here.
United States v. Jones, No. 10-1259: Federal government agents installed a GPS tracking device on a vehicle without first obtaining a valid warrant and then tracked that vehicle for 28 days. The D.C. Circuit held that the warrantless use of the tracking device violated the Fourth Amendment, and the government sought Supreme Court review, arguing that such use was not a “search.” The Court today held that the government’s attachment of the GPS device to the vehicle, and its use of that device to monitor the vehicle’s movements, constituted a search under the Fourth Amendment. It also ruled that the government had forfeited its alternative argument -- that, if the use was a “search,” it was reasonable here -- because the government had not raised that argument in the courts below.
The Court’s decision is available
here.