Riley v. California (2014)
The Supreme Court’s answer to whether police can search your phone without a warrant: get a warrant. Even if you’re under arrest.
The Story
August 2009, San Diego. Police pull over a driver named David Riley for expired registration tags — and it turns out his license is suspended too. The car gets impounded, and during the standard inventory search, officers find two guns hidden under the hood. Riley is arrested.
Then an officer picks up Riley’s smartphone and starts scrolling. No warrant. Texts, contacts, photos, videos. What police found helped prosecutors connect Riley to a gang shooting from weeks earlier — a completely separate incident — and he was convicted, with the phone evidence playing a key role.
Riley’s lawyers argued the phone search violated his Fourth Amendment rights. The state argued police have always been allowed to search whatever an arrested person is carrying — a rule the Supreme Court set in Chimel v. California (1969) so officers can find weapons and stop evidence from being destroyed. Why should a phone be different from a wallet?
The case reached the Supreme Court, paired with a second case about a Boston man whose flip phone was searched after an arrest.
What the Court Decided
The Court ruled 9–0 — unanimous, which almost never happens in major constitutional cases — that police generally may not search the digital contents of a cell phone without a warrant, even during a lawful arrest.
Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the Court, said phones simply aren’t like wallets or cigarette packs. They hold detailed records of nearly every part of a person’s life — messages, photos, browsing history, location data. Comparing a phone search to searching physical pockets, Roberts wrote, is like saying a ride on horseback is basically the same as a flight to the moon.
And the two reasons police can search arrestees — officer safety and preventing evidence destruction — don’t apply to data. The information on a phone can’t hurt anyone, and it isn’t going anywhere while police ask a judge for a warrant.
Why It Matters to You
Because of this case, the data on your phone has some of the strongest privacy protection of anything you own. Police can take your phone if you’re arrested — but opening it and going through your texts, photos, and apps requires a judge’s sign-off first, unless you consent or there’s a true emergency.
Every rule in our full phone search guide traces back to this decision. It’s also the foundation courts now use when new phone questions come up — location tracking, passcodes, Face ID — even the ones that are still being fought over.
Keep Exploring
Source
Read the full opinion: Riley v. California, 573 U.S. 373 (2014) — supreme.justia.com · Also available at law.cornell.edu (Cornell Legal Information Institute)
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