What the US Supreme Court Decision Means for Lifetime GPS Monitoring

In the last week we’ve received a few questions about the recent Supreme Court decision and what it means for people on lifetime GPS currently or the “lifetime monitoring bill” presently being considered in the Florida Legislature, so we thought we would address it in a post.

On March 30, 2015 the Supreme Court of the US issued an opinion in the case of TORREY DALE GRADY v. NORTH CAROLINA. The opinion can be found here in case you want to read it (it’s only 5 pages), but allow us to summarize:

Mr. Grady, not a particularly sympathetic Plaintiff because he is a repeat sex offender, challenged a requirement that he be on a GPS monitor for the rest of his life. The argument that he put forth was that the requirement to wear the GPS monitor constituted an unlawful search and seizure in violation of the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution.

The 4th Amendment protects against unreasonable search and seizure. Please note the key word “unreasonable”, because that is what the Supreme Court’s decision hinges on.

Ultimately the Court DID decide that lifetime GPS DID constitute a search and they DID remand the case back to the lower court. So the Plaintiff DID win this round. However, the court’s conclusion was that it MIGHT still be lawful if the court determines it’s “reasonable”, which it failed to justify and which is why it was sent back.

Here’s what the court actually said, “That conclusion, however, does not decide the ultimate question of the program’s constitutionality. The Fourth Amendment prohibits only unreasonable searches. The reasonableness of a search depends on the totality of the circumstances, including the nature and purpose of the search and the extent to which the search intrudes upon reasonable privacy expectations… The North Carolina courts did not examine whether the State’s monitoring program is reasonable—when properly viewed as a search—and we will not do so in the first instance.”

In other words, the victory was not that the Supreme Court said that North Carolina can’t do this… the victory was that the Supreme Court sent it back to the lower court to first find it “reasonable”. If the lower court finds it “reasonable” for Mr. Grady to remain on GPS for the rest of his life, it might still happen.