Lawyer who argued for landmark SCOTUS privacy decision says Trump “is a moron”

In the world of American privacy law, one Supreme Court decision casts a long shadow over all others: Katz v. United States.

In that decision, which was handed down in December 1967, the court famously held that the Fourth Amendment “protects people rather than places.” Katz countermanded a previous Supreme Court ruling from 1928, which required a physical trespass to prove a Fourth Amendment violation.

In Katz, because the FBI placed secret microphones without a warrant on a Los Angeles phone booth to investigate Charles Katz’ illegal gambling, the Supreme Court reversed a lower court’s decision. The court found that a telephone booth was, in fact, a place (like a bedroom) where a person has a “reasonable expectation of privacy.”