KTBB News, Weather, Talk

(WASHINGTON) -- The Supreme Court on Monday limited law enforcement's use of sprawling "geofence warrants" that track a suspect using cellphone location data from a broad swath of users, including people with no connection to a crime.

In a 6-3 decision, Justice Elena Kagan wrote that collection of location data through a geofence warrant implicates the Fourth Amendment's protections against unreasonable searches and seizures -- a setback for the federal government, which argued the warrants were a critical law enforcement tool that did not amount to a search at all.

"An individual has a reasonable expectation of privacy in records about his cell phone's location, and police intrude on that constitutionally protected interest when they demand the information -- even though for only a limited time, and from a third-party tech company," Kagan wrote for the majority.

Kagan concluded that location data -- which she described as "a personal journal of a user's movements" -- resembles other kinds of private materials such as emails, photographs or documents and should be "shielded from the 'inquisitive eyes' of the government."

"Today's decision follows from the same judicial obligation, to guard against the same risk of undue encroachment. The Fourth Amendment applies, too, when officials tap into Google's 'database of physical location information.' That database is new, but the principle covering it is not: That principle is instead the one our history has given. The Fourth Amendment must, as ever, protect against unjustified governmental intrusion on the privacy of the individual," Kagan wrote.

Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Amy Coney Barrett dissented. In his dissenting opinion, Justice Alito argued the ruling was an "irresponsible escapade" and "destabilizes longstanding Fourth Amendment jurisprudence."

In effect, the ruling requires authorities to obtain a narrowly tailored warrant before examining cellphone data of a broad swath of users in an area. Brett Max Kaufman, senior counsel with ACLU’s Center for Democracy, called the new restrictions on geofence warrants "critical protection against invasive and overbroad government searches of our personal information."

"Law enforcement and courts are on notice that new technology does not open up surveillance loopholes, and strict adherence to the Fourth Amendment’s protections is required," Kaufman said.  

While the Supreme Court ruled that location data is protected by the Fourth Amendment, the justices did not weigh in on the legality of the search that prompted the legal challenge -- instead leaving that issue for the lower courts to reexamine.

The landmark decision stemmed from a case involving a 2019 bank robbery in Virginia. Law enforcement was able to track down the robber using a geofence warrant that included the location data for every cellphone within a 150-meter radius of the robbery.

While Okello Chatrie, the suspect and Supreme Court plaintiff, eventually pleaded guilty to the armed robbery and was sentenced to serve 12 years in prison, his lawyers have argued that the warrant violated his Fourth Amendment rights because it allowed law enforcement to "to search first and develop suspicions later."

Google has since changed its policies on geofence warrants, storing the information on a user's phone rather than a separate database; however, the companies such as Apple, Lyft, Snapchat and Uber still retain location information and could be impacted by the ruling, according to Michael Levy -- a former federal prosecutor and adjunct professor at University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School.

Greg Nojeim, a senior counsel at the Center for Democracy & Technology, applauded the Supreme Court's ruling and said it "slammed that door shut" on law enforcement misusing location data.

"This decision sets the right direction for user privacy: carrying a phone and using apps -- doing the ordinary things cellphone users do -- does not compromise your rights," Nojeim said.

Copyright © 2026, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(WASHINGTON) -- In a ruling with direct bearing on the midterm elections, the Supreme Court on Monday narrowly upheld a Mississippi law allowing tabulation of late-arriving mail-in ballots so long as they were postmarked by Election Day.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett, writing for the 5-4 majority, wrote that federal election statutes -- which say nothing about ballot receipt -- do not override states' ability to set their own policies for handling tardy votes by mail. 

"The Framers recognized the difficulty of crafting election laws applicable to every probable change in the situation of the country. So instead of constitutionalizing election law, they decided that a discretionary power over elections needed to be lodged somewhere. Suffice it to say, that power was not lodged in this Court," Barrett wrote.

The decision is a loss for the Republican Party, which brought the case, and the Trump administration, which has pushed to override state election rules nationwide by imposing strict federal limits on voting by mail.

The president on Monday called the Supreme Court’s decision a "tremendous loss" and again called on Congress to pass the SAVE America Act, his signature election and voting reforms legislation.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune has repeatedly said there aren't enough Republican votes for it to pass.

The 29 states that currently accept some timely cast but late-arriving mail-in ballots -- sometimes up to several days after polls have closed -- will be able to continue providing a grace period.

In dissent, Justice Samuel Alito, joined by Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, wrote that the decision flouts the meaning of "election day" as set forth in federal law.

"Not only is today's decision inconsistent with statutory text, legal context, historical practice, and precedent; it also threatens to produce lamentable consequences," Alito wrote. "The majority's holding spawns a slurry of troubling election-law questions and risks further undermining Americans' confidence in election integrity."

The outcome is a win for Mississippi, which had defended its policy of accepting ballots up to five days after voting had ended, and voting rights advocates who had argued that decades of legal precedent supported the primary authority of states to run their own elections. 

Voters heavily reliant on the U.S. Postal Service, such as rural, overseas and disabled voters, had feared a higher risk of having ballots rejected if delivery is delayed, election watchdog groups said.

Lateness is the primary reason mail ballots are rejected nationwide, according to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC).

During the 2024 election, 28 million mail ballots were cast in the 14 states with postmark deadlines and grace periods, according to EAC. Roughly 725,000 were not counted because they were late. 

The Supreme Court ruling comes as Trump has pushed aggressively to increase federal oversight of mail-in voting. 

A Trump executive order signed in March 2026 would require states to submit approved voter lists to the U.S. Postal Service, which in turn would be tasked with ensuring ballots are only delivered to eligible residents. 

Last week, Federal District Court Judge Indira Talwani of Massachusetts put the order on hold, writing in her decision, "The Constitution reserves the power to determine voter eligibility to the States alone. Neither the Executive Branch nor Congress may interfere with this power."

The Postal Service has not yet implemented a proposed policy change to comply with Trump's order, but a top USPS official confirmed to Congress that his agency would refuse to deliver ballots unless states turn over lists of voters. 

"No law enacted by Congress delegates authority to control mail-in voting to USPS. The voting-related guidance currently issued by USPS is not binding on the States, merely recommended," Talwani’s ruling said. 

Copyright © 2026, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(WASHINGTON) -- The Supreme Court has blocked for now President Donald Trump's unprecedented attempt to fire a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, Lisa Cook, over the allegation of gross negligence and without any formal opportunity for her to answer the claims. 

In a 5-4 ruling, Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the court's majority, upheld limits Congress imposed on a president's attempt to remove members of the Fed as a legitimate protection of the institution's historical independence. 

While the president has the ability to fire Cook "for cause," he wrote, "the President failed to afford Cook the procedural protections to which she was entitled by statute. Without such protections, she could not properly dispute the charges the President laid against her."

Roberts said the majority's "narrow" decision took no position on the underlying allegations against Cook or whether the president met the standard for removing her. The outcome leaves the door open to the possibility that Trump could continue to try to press his case. 

"The ultimate question of whether the President can remove Cook for cause will depend in part on the underlying facts. In this opinion, we have not addressed the facts, as they have yet to be found or analyzed under the relevant legal standards," Roberts wrote. "Rather, we have simply addressed the parties' arguments about the appropriate legal standards under which the facts must be evaluated." 

Cook, a Democratic appointee who has 10 years left on her 14-year term, will retain her position for now. She is the first Black woman to serve on the central bank's advisory committee. 

Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett dissented in the case. 

Barrett wrote that the court's decision amounts to "significant interference with the President's removal authority" constituting "irreparable harm" while the litigation continues. 

While the court has recognized expansive power of a president over executive branch agencies, it has appeared to draw a line at the Fed, which has a long history of independence from direct White House interference. 

Federal law allows presidents to remove a Fed governor, but only for cause. The heart of Trump's appeal before the high court involved what constitutes "cause" -- who gets to decide that and what due process may be owed.

The president had asserted unchecked power, insisting allegations of mortgage fraud against Cook -- raised by a member of Trump's administration, Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte -- were sufficient basis alone for her removal.

Pulte, who Trump has since appointed to serve as acting director of national intelligence, said in a post on X, "As I have repeatedly said, I believe Lisa Cook will be indicted for mortgage fraud." 

Trump has claimed Cook illegally filed a mortgage application for a second home as a "primary" residence in an effort to secure more favorable loan terms, at the very least creating an impression of impropriety. The Justice Department has opened a criminal investigation. 

Cook, who refused to resign and has not been charged with a crime, insists through her attorneys that relying on "one stray reference" in a 2021 mortgage document amounts to pretext for a politically motivated effort to manipulate the Fed's policy board.

"This was never about mortgage documents signed years before I became a Federal Reserve governor. It was an attempt to remove me on a manufactured pretext because I refused to bow to political pressure and continued to set interest rates based only on what would best serve the American people," Cook said in a statement after the high court's decision. "That is the most fundamental obligation of a Federal Reserve governor. Today's ruling affirms a principle that has underpinned sound economic stewardship for generations."

The case was being examined by the court in a very preliminary posture, focusing primarily on Trump's request to stay a lower court order that Cook be allowed to remain on the job as litigation continues. No lower court has thoroughly considered the legal or constitutional issues connected to the dispute.

The court's decision is widely seen as a victory for the independence of the Federal Reserve -- at least in the near term -- in the face of Trump's extraordinary effort to influence the central bank.  

Copyright © 2026, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(WASHINGTON) -- In a landmark decision that could transform the federal government, the Supreme Court has voted to allow President Donald Trump to remove a Democratic member of the Federal Trade Commission, Rebecca Slaughter, for policy reasons, rolling back 90 years of legal precedent that had prevented at-will removal of independent agency officials and significantly expanding presidential power.

The 6-3 decision came from Chief Justice John Roberts.

Writing for the majority, Roberts declared "for cause" removal protections imposed by Congress at more than two dozen independent, bipartisan government agencies a violation of the separation of powers. 

"What text, history, and structure settle, our precedent confirms -- the President may remove his subordinates at will," Roberts wrote. 

The decision gives Trump and future presidents more control over the government and effectively ends the bipartisan, independent nature of regulatory agencies that oversee many aspects of American life. 

President Trump, in a post to his social media platform, called the Supreme Court's decision  a "BIG WIN" and "one of the most important ever given with respect to Presidential Powers."

In her dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, accused her colleagues of endorsing a theory of "total executive control" unimagined by the nation's founders. 

"The result is a President who emerges with far greater power than ever before," Sotomayor wrote. "It is a power, however, that neither the People, nor Congress, nor the Constitution bestowed upon him. In granting the President this unbridled authority, the Court upends its precedent, misconstrues our history, and sheds any pretense of judicial modesty. I respectfully dissent."

Since the New Deal era, independent agencies -- historically led by subject-matter experts from both parties -- have policed stock trades, transportation systems, election campaigns, consumer product safety and broadcast licenses. 

Giving the president more direct control over who serves on those bodies has long been a goal of conservatives, who have objected to unelected bureaucrats wielding too much power with little accountability.  

The ruling is a loss for liberals who have long championed a role for agencies like the FTC, Federal Election Commission, Securities and Exchange Commission, Federal Communications Commission and dozens of others insulated from politics in the interest of the regulatory consistency. 

The court's decision does not eliminate the agencies themselves but will allow them to be packed with only Republicans or only Democrats, if a president wishes, giving the White House more direct control over their functions. 

The conservative majority effectively overruled a unanimous 1935 Supreme Court decision involving the FTC -- Humphrey's Executor v. U.S. -- which had previously affirmed limits on a president's ability to fire members of the commission only for cause. 

"Humphrey’s Executor is just a dried husk of whatever people used to think it was," Chief Justice John Roberts said bluntly during oral arguments in December. 

Copyright © 2026, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.