United States v. Graham

United States v. Graham
Court	United States District Court for the District of Maryland
Full case name	United States of America v. Aaron Graham, and Eric Jordan
Decided	March 1, 2012
Docket nos.	1:11-cr-00094
Citation(s)	846 F. Supp. 2d 384 (D. Md. 2012)
Court membership
Judge(s) sitting	Richard D. Bennett
Keywords
U.S. Const. Amend. IV, Stored Communications Act

United States v. Graham, 846 F. Supp. 2d 384 (D. Md. 2012),^[1] was a Maryland District Court case in which the Court held that historical cell site location data is not protected by the Fourth Amendment. Reacting to the precedent established by the recent Supreme Court case United States v. Jones in conjunction with the application of the third party doctrine, Judge Richard D. Bennett found that "information voluntarily disclosed to a third party ceases to enjoy Fourth Amendment protection" because that information no longer belongs to the consumer, but rather to the telecommunications company that handles the transmissions records.^[2] The historical cell site location data is then not subject to the privacy protections afforded by the Fourth Amendment standard of probable cause, but rather to the Stored Communications Act, which governs the voluntary or compelled disclosure of stored electronic communications records.

A three judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the district court on the Fourth Amendment issue in August 2015, but the full court en banc upheld the district court in May 2016. Its validity has grave doubt after the Supreme Court of the United States decided Carpenter v. United States in 2018.