Mr. Beat presents
Supreme Court Briefs
Los Angeles, California February 25, 1965
Charles Katz makes a phone call at a public telephone booth near his apartment on Sunset
Boulevard. Wait Mr. Beat, what the heck is a public telephone booth?
Geez, do I feel old. Ok, so...public telephone booths. A long time ago, before cell phones, public telephone
booths were little structures where you entered and you made a phone call after inserting some money and it was connected to a
landline, a telephone line connected to other telephones all over the place. Oh, and public telephone booths
also could double as time machines.
Anyway, Katz 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?
Before we find out how the Court decided, I want to thank this video’s sponsor, Babbel,
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Ok, so did Katz deserve privacy in that phone booth? 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. “[Katz] has strenuously argued that the
booth was a "constitutionally protected area." The Government has maintained with equal vigor
that it was not. But this effort to decide whether or not a given "area," viewed in the
abstract, is "constitutionally protected" deflects attention from the problem presented
by this case. For 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.”
In other words, the Court ruled that privacy for American citizens had now extended beyond
the home, and it expanded privacy into the electronic age. Justice John Marshall Harlan
II even described a test to attempt to identify a “reasonable expectation of privacy.”
Katz v. United States might just be the most important Supreme Court case to ever look
at privacy and really attempt to answer that question: what IS privacy?
Today, despite the Katz decision, Americans don’t have as much privacy. The federal
government regularly conducts mass surveillance without warrants over citizens. This is what
led to Edward Snowden speaking out back in 2013. But while most Americans don’t seem
that bothered by the fact that their own government or corporations spy on them, it’s hard to
deny the troublesome implications of mass surveillance. This is, after all, what George
Orwell’s 1984 was supposed to warn us all about. Big Brother is always watching. And
it’s why the Katz decision remains so gosh darn important, and it probably ought to be revisited.
I’ll see you for the next Supreme Court case, jury!
So what do you think? Is Big Brother watching? Did you just commit a thoughtcrime? But seriously,
do you think the Katz decision be expanded since the technology has dramatically changed since 1967? I’d love
to hear from you in the comments. Let me know. Also, any other Supreme Court case suggestions, I'll take 'em. And, if you didn't know about this
I now have a PO Box. You can actually mail me...snail mail me...physical stuff. So mail me stuff and I’ll share it with
the world. The address is in the description and pinned comment. And thanks for
watching, Big Brother!