Olmstead v. U.S.

Citation: Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438 (1928).

Facts
Olmstead was a Seattle bootlegger whose Prohibition Act conviction was the product of a federal wiretap. He challenged his conviction on three grounds, arguing unsuccessfully that the wiretap evidence should have been suppressed as a violation of either his Fourth Amendment rights, his Fifth Amendment privilege against self- incrimination, or the rights implicit in the Washington state statute that outlawed wiretapping.

Supreme Court Decision
For a majority of the Court, writing through Chief Justice Taft, Olmstead’s Fourth Amendment challenge was doomed by the absence of “an official search and seizure of his person, or such a seizure of his papers or his tangible material effects, or an actual physical invasion of his house or curtilage. for the purposes of making a seizure,” 277 U.S. at 466. Congress did so by enacting the 1934 Communications Act.

Dissenting Opinions
Justice Holmes in his dissent tersely characterized the conduct of federal wiretappers as “dirty business.” Id. at 470. The dissent of Justice Brandeis observed that the drafters of the Constitution “conferred as against the Government, the right to be let alone &mdash; the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men. To protect that right, every unjustifiable intrusion by the Government against privacy of the individual whatever the means employed, must be deemed in violation of the Fourth Amendment.” Id. at 478-79.

Olmstead is remembered most today for the dissents of Holmes and Brandeis, but for four decades it stood for the view that the Fourth Amendment’s search and seizure commands did not apply to government wiretapping accomplished without a trespass onto private property.