Washington, D.C. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the American Civil Liberties Union, and the ACLU of Massachusetts today filed a petition for a writ of certiorari, asking the Supreme Court to hear a challenge to the Department of Homeland Security’s policy and practice of warrantless and suspicionless searches of travelers’ electronic devices at U.S. airports and other ports of entry.
The lawsuit,
Merchant v. Mayorkas, was filed in September 2017 on behalf of several travelers whose cell phones, laptops, and other electronic devices were searched without warrants at the U.S. border. In November 2019, a federal district court in Boston ruled that border agencies’ policies on electronic device searches violate the Fourth Amendment, and required border officers to have reasonable suspicion of digital contraband before they can search a traveler’s device. A three-judge panel at the First Circuit reversed this decision in February 2021.