The essence of the Aereo ruling is that Aereo is equivalent to a cable company, not merely an equipment provider.
"behind-the-scenes technological differences do not distinguish Aereo's system from cable systems, which do perform publicly."
The Justices announce opinions in order of reverse seniority, so we won't get anything from Alito, Sotomayor, or Kagan today. (The Chief Justice is always the most senior, regardless of time on the bench.)
Although the case is remanded to the lower courts, the Aereo ruling does not appear to leave Aereo any room to maneuver.
"In other cases involving different kinds of service or technology providers, a user's involvement in the operation of the provider's equipment and selection of the content transmitted may well bear on whether the provider performs within the meaning of the Act. But the many similarities between Aereo and cable companies . . . convince us that this difference is not critical here."
We are now waiting for Lyle to come on the line and give us the next opinion.
Here's Lyle with the third and final opinion. Cellphone privacy cases decided together.
The Chief Justice has the opinion for the Court.
Holding: the police generally may not without a warrant search digital information on the cellphone seized from an individual who has been arrested.
This is a sweeping endorsement of digital privacy.
The decision of the California appellate court in Riley v. California is reversed.
The opinion is unanimous, although Alito files an opinion concurring in part and concurring in the judgment.
This is all we have for today. (Although that's quite a lot.)
"Cell phones differ in both a quantitative and qualitative sense from other objects that might be carried on an arrestee's person" that can be searches without a warrant.
The Court does not even permit warrantless searches that are related to the reasons for an arrest.
This means that there are four cases left: NLRB v. Noel Canning, McCullen v. Coakley, Harris v. Quinn, and Hobby Lobby.
The Court does hold that a warrantless search is permitted in exigent circumstances, which is always true for searches. That is limited, however. The Court gives the examples of child abduction and the threat of bombs being detonated.
"Modern cell phones are not just another technological convenience. With all they contain and all they may reveal, they hold for many Americans the privacies of life.
It seems that the Chief Justice is still reading from his opinion.
The Court has recessed for today and will return tomorrow. That means there will be one other opinion day because the practice is to announce the last day on the day before. The final day either could be Monday or even Friday; more likely Monday.
For those of you who are joining us late, the Court is finished issuing opinions for today. It issued three: Fifth Third v. Dudenhoffer, ABC v. Aereo, and the cellphone privacy cases as one decision.
Following on Lyle's comments below, we know that the Court will be in session tomorrow. It also appears that there will be at least one more opinion day, although we don't know whether it will be Monday or some other day.
That's all we have for today. Just to reiterate, the Court issued three opinions today, leaving four to be decided: NLRB v. Noel Canning (recess appointments), McCullen v. Coakley (abortion clinic buffer zones), Harris v. Quinn (public employee unions), and Hobby Lobby (Affordable Care Act contraception mandate).
We know that tomorrow is not likely to be the last day, although we still are not sure whether the last day will be Monday or some other day.
There was a real prospect that the Court would split the baby in the cell phone cases because one involved a flip phone search that was not very intrusive. But the Court instead articulated a bright line rule that is much clearer and will be much easier to administer in practice.
Just as an aside, Hobby Lobby no longer is captioned Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby; it is now captioned Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, to account for the new secretary of HHS. But fortunately we can still just keep calling it Hobby Lobby.
Cell phones "are now such a pervasive and insistent part of daily life that the proverbial visitor from Mars might conclude they were an important feature of human anatomy."
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