Katz v. United States

Facts

Charles Katz used a public pay phone booth to transmit illegal gambling wagers from Los Angeles to Miami and Boston. Unbeknownst to Katz, the FBI was recording his conversations via an electronic eavesdropping device attached to the exterior of the phone booth. Katz was convicted based on these recordings. He challenged his conviction, arguing that the recordings were obtained in violation of his Fourth Amendment rights. The Court of Appeals sided with the FBI because there was no physical intrusion into the phone booth itself.

Constitutional issues of the case

Ruling

Decision and rationale

The Court ruled 7–1 in favor of Katz, with Justice Black in dissent. Justice Marshall did not participate in the vote. Writing for the majority, Justice Stewart wrote, "One who occupies [a telephone booth], shuts the door behind him, and pays the toll that permits him to place a call is surely entitled to assume that the words he utters into the mouthpiece will not be broadcast to the world." Certain details, such as shutting the door on the telephone booth, help determine if a person intends for a conversation to be private. Thus, private conversations can be made in public areas.

Justice Harlan's concurring opinion summarizes the essential holdings of the majority:

(a) that an enclosed telephone booth is an area where, like a home, and unlike a field, a person has a constitutionally protected reasonable expectation of privacy; (b) that electronic as well as physical intrusion into a place that is in this sense private may constitute a violation of the Fourth Amendment; and (c) that an invasion of a constitutionally protected area by federal authorities is, as the Court has long held, presumptively unreasonable in the absence of a search warrant.

The majority opinion by Justice Stewart did not dispute that a magistrate "could constitutionally have authorized" the wiretap in this case, but, since such a warrant was neither sought nor obtained, the search was therefore unconstitutional. Likewise, the Court said it was not recognizing any general right to privacy in the Fourth Amendment: "the protection of a person's general right to privacy—his right to be let alone by other people—is, like the protection of his property and of his very life, left largely to the law of the individual States."

The Katz case made government wiretapping by both state and federal authorities subject to the Fourth Amendment's warrant requirements.

Justice Harlan's concurrence

In a concurring opinion, Justice Harlan built upon the foundations of the majority opinion and formulated the "reasonable expectation" test for determining whether government activity constitutes a search. Harlan's test, not the majority opinion, is the most common formulation cited by courts. Later, this test was arranged into a two prong test for determining the existence of privacy: If (1) the individual "has exhibited an actual (subjective) expectation of privacy", and (2) society is prepared to recognize that this expectation is (objectively) reasonable, then there is a right of privacy in the given circumstance. This test was adopted by the majority in Smith v. Maryland (1979).

Justice Black's dissent

In his dissent, Justice Hugo Black argued that the Fourth Amendment, as a whole, was only meant to protect "things" from physical search and seizure; it was not meant to protect personal privacy. Additionally, Black argued that the modern act of wiretapping was analogous to the act of eavesdropping, which was around even when the Bill of Rights was drafted. Black concluded that if the drafters of the Fourth Amendment had meant for it to protect against eavesdropping they would have included the proper language.