In a somewhat surprising 9th Circuit ruling (en banc, or in front of the entire set of judges), the court ruled that the 4th Amendment does apply at the border, that agents do need to recognize there's an expectation of privacy, and cannot do a search without reason.

Insomniac Joseph Stoiber, 29, was walking in his neighborhood when he couldn't sleep at 2:30 a.m. May 30, talking to his friend on the phone about baseball. Lakeland police Officer Tyler Anderson saw him in the community near Florida Southern College and stopped him. After asking Stoiber what he was doing, Anderson asked to pat him down. Stoiber said no. Seeing a bulge in Stoiber's pocket, Anderson began patting him down anyway. During the search, Stoiber, who had been chewing tobacco, spit the accumulated saliva on the grass or sidewalk. That's been against the law in Lakeland since 1944.

Can law enforcement enter your house and use a secret video camera to record the intimate details inside? On Tuesday, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals unfortunately answered that question with "yes."

A judge’s ruling Wednesday on a request to authorize a class action lawsuit over the New York Police Department’s (NYPD) use of “stop-and-frisk” searches could see more than 1 million people line up to file claims against the department for violating their constitutional rights.

The California Court of Appeal on September 26 approved a police officer's rifling through the cell phone belonging to someone who had just been pulled over for a traffic violation.