United States v. Kamaldoss

Court: U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit

Date Filed: Nov. 1, 2024

Background: On two separate occasions in 2019, U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents conducted warrantless searches of Ezhil Kamaldoss’s electronic devices at John F. Kennedy International Airport after he returned from trips abroad. The government later used information gathered from these searches to obtain a series of search warrants. In 2021, a grand jury indicted Kamaldoss, charging him with, among other things, conspiring to distribute opioid pills and other illegal controlled substances imported from India. He was later convicted.

Kamaldoss filed a motion to suppress the evidence collected during the warrantless searches, but the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York denied the motion, concluding that the searches did not violate his constitutional rights.

Kamaldoss appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

Our Position: In a joint friend-of-the-court brief, the Reporters Committee and the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University argue that the Second Circuit should hold that the government’s searches of Kamaldoss’s cell phone violated the Constitution.

• Government searches of electronic devices burden First and Fourth Amendment freedoms.

• The government’s warrantless searches of Kamaldoss’s cell phone were unconstitutional.

From the Brief: “Unfettered government access to journalists’ devices chills the willingness of sources to share information with journalists, and thereby impedes journalists’ ability to gather the news and inform the public.”

Related: Since 2020, the Reporters Committee and the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University have teamed up to file several friend-of-the-court briefs urging federal courts to find that warrantless cellphone searches at the border are unconstitutional. Check out our Q&A with Reporters Committee Staff Attorney Grayson Clary to learn more about why this issue poses such a concern for journalists and their sources.