Supreme Court Denies Certiorari to Rule on Warrantless Pole Camera Surveillance
This case law update was written by Michael J. Sgarlat, an attorney at the law firm of Shaw Bransford & Roth, where he has practiced federal personnel and employment law since 2015. Mr. Sgarlat works with federal employees to respond to proposed disciplinary and adverse actions, and has experience litigating cases before the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board.
On October 8, 2021, Travis Tuggle petitioned the Supreme Court for a writ of certiorari to determine whether long-term, continuous, and surreptitious video surveillance of a home and its curtilage constitutes a search under the Fourth Amendment. Tuggle’s petition contested a Seventh Circuit decision finding that warrantless public pole camera surveillance is not an unlawful search under the Fourth Amendment, which we reported on last year. On February 22, 2022, the Supreme Court denied Tuggle’s petition.
Tuggle’s petition relates to the government’s use of over 18 months of video footage taken from three cameras placed on utility poles outside of Tuggle’s home to support an indictment of him for over 100 instances of suspected drug deliveries and transactions. After a grand jury indicted Tuggle on various drug offenses, Tuggle moved to suppress the video footage before trail, claiming that the use of the cameras was a warrantless search. The district court denied the motion, and Tuggle was sentenced to 360 months’ imprisonment for one count and 240 months’ imprisonment for another.
Tuggle appealed the district court of appeal’s denial of his motion to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. The Seventh Circuit noted that this was a case of first impression, and that it could not identify any cases that evaluated the constitutionality of the government’s use of remote cameras, pole cameras, or the like.
Accordingly, the Seventh Circuit examined whether the surveillance at issue infringed on Tuggle’s expectation of privacy. The court held that Tuggle did not have a subjective expectation of privacy in what occurs outside of his home, and that there was no objective expectation of privacy because the government used “commonplace technology.” Thus, the Seventh Circuit held that the use of pole cameras did not constitute an unconstitutional search.
However, the Seventh Circuit certainly did express some concern with the governments’ actions. The court stated that 18 months of surveillance “is concerning, even if permissible.” It also cautioned about a “not-so-distant future” where “future Americans will traverse their communities under the perpetual gaze of cameras.”
Ultimately, the Supreme Court declined to weigh in on the matter when given the opportunity with Tuggle’s petition.
Read the Seventh Circuit decision
Read the Petition for Writ of Certiorari
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