U.S. v. Pineda-Moreno - Appealing to the Supreme Court

I was delighted to hear on the radio this Friday that Pineda-Moreno will appeal the Ninth Circuit's ruling handed down a couple of weeks ago. As outlined in my earlier blog post - the majority affirmed the district court's ruling, which held the Fourth Amendment allowed police to enter Pineda-Moreno's driveway and install a GPS tracking unit under his SUV without a warrant. His attorney plans to rely on the dissenting opinion in his appeal.

This case is likely to be heard by the Supremes because it presents a novel question of how the Fourth Amendment grows with technology. The use of GPS presents a new question of privacy not unlike the thermal imaging technology presented in Kyllo v. US (533 U.S. 27 (2001)). How the case will come out of the Supreme Court is out of my realm of guessing. I do know that the dissenting opinion is well reasoned and quite compelling. If enough justices are persuaded by it then Pineda-Moreno stands a good chance of a favorable result.