> Riley has been widely praised as “a sweeping victory for privacy rights”[5] with legal scholars describing the decision as "the privacy gift that keeps on giving."
To be fair the current court in 2025 is a different court than 2018, and in 2024 they overruled a long standing precedent in the chevron doctrine. It wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility that this court would disregard Riley.
I do agree that it currently like the court is broadly pro-privacy but I also think it entirely depends on the case and its specifics.
Five of the Riley justices are still on the court. Of the four that aren’t, there’s two that seem stronger on privacy than his or her predecessor (Gorsuch, KBJ), one that seems like a wash (Kavanaugh), and maybe one that’s less strong on privacy (Barrett).
You can point to Roe and Chevron, but those didn’t come out of nowhere. The first, conservatives vowed to overturn 50 years ago—and its expansive notion of judicially declaring rights is not embraced even among liberals on the court today. The second was a judge created interpretive doctrine anyway, and proved unworkable over time. But it also didn’t come out of nowhere. Gorsuch has been writing about it since before I was in law school, and that was 15 years ago.
Roe v Wade was based on the right to privacy. The Supreme Court ruling that overturned it eliminated our right to privacy. Then they invalidated Roe v Wade as a corollary.
Since the current court eliminated the right to privacy in the US, I doubt they’ll spontaneously decide to restore it.
Roe wasn’t about a right to “privacy.” The right to privacy comes from the fourth amendment:
> The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated…
If Roe was about “privacy”—i.e. laws against abortion are a “search” of your “person,” then by the same logic—laws against drowning your infant in the bathtub constitute a “search” of your “house.”
Dobbs didn’t get rid of the right to privacy. It’s still there in the fourth amendment. It simply dropped the pretense that abortion was about privacy (which Casey had already done).
Wrong on your first point - Privacy right is not based on the 4th amendment but rather on the 9th amendment (unenumerated rights are persevered to the people).
Correct on your second point - Dobbs didn't take any rights away, it merely delegated to the States, where historically, such rights such rights are granted.
A right can’t be “based” on the 9th amendment. The 9th amendment just says the bill of rights isn’t an exhaustive enumeration. It can’t be the source of rights—the rights must come from somewhere else.
I don’t think this is right. It reads backwards to me. Didn’t Roe, controversially, hold that abortion was protected as a function of constitutional protections related to privacy (in the due process clause of the 14th amendment—specifically as one form of the “liberty” you can’t be “deprived of” without “due process of law”)? Then attempted to explain in medically specific terms when exactly your pregnancy crosses over from being a matter of liberty/personal privacy into a matter that can be regulated or prohibited?
Then didn’t Dobbs basically work by undoing the idea that you can locate abortion rights in the due process clause, rather than somehow wrecking the constitutional amendment itself?
Roe purports to be about privacy. But it’s really about the second point you list, which is purporting to define when a fetus becomes sufficiently developed to warrant protection from the state. After all, nothing changes between conception and the day before birth from the point of view of privacy. Or heck, even the day after birth—you have a privacy right in your home, not only your person. So the “privacy” right isn’t holding up any weight. All the work is being done by the moral determination that a fetus in the first two trimesters isn’t sufficiently developed to warrant legal protection. Once you assert that killing an 8 week fetus is no different than having a body part removed, the work being done by privacy is trivial.
That latter question has nothing to do with privacy or the constitution. It’s a general moral judgment based on underlying biological facts. In that respect, Roe simply is an articulation of Harry Blackmun’s Methodist religious beliefs. The United Methodist Church came out strongly in favor of abortion legality in the 1960s. But there’s nothing in the constitution supporting the determination Roe reached and Roe didn’t even pretend there was.
There is a legal subtlety here that's often misunderstood (or misrepresented) by most pro-abortionists:
The right to privacy was curved out of the 9th Amendment in the district court decision (not the 4th or the 14th).
The Supreme court upheld the district court decision and went further by adding the protection of the 14th amendment as to how and when this privacy right can be abridged by the states (not without due process of law).
States must show a compelling interest to intervene in women's decision to abort, and this compelling interest ripens only after the first trimester of pregnancy.
That Court you're so impressed with repeatedly refused to review lower court rulings that police can physically force a suspect to press their finger against their phone or force them to look at it to unlock it with thumbprint or face ID. The most recent ruling, which they refused to hear an appeal on, was v Payne. The opinion from the 9th circuit was that it was oke-dokeily because, and I quote, "required no cognitive exertion, placing it firmly in the same category as a blood draw or fingerprint taken at booking", and also because the cop could have done it while Payne was unconscious or asleep. The court you're so impressed with looked at that and in refusing to hear the appeal, upheld the decision.
That court you're so impressed with also:
..ruled that silence does not indicate someone is exercising their right to remain silent (!) in Berghuis v. Thompkins. I mean really, you can't make this shit up.
...made Miranda rights almost worthless in Vega v. Tekoh, where a cop cornered a nurse in a storage room, threatened the nurse by putting his hand on his gun, threatened him and his family with deportation, etc...and then his statements were then used against them in court. The ruling removed the right to sue for having one's Miranda rights violated, only that they can suppress the statements in court.
...ruled that imprisoning someone did not count as "custodial". Again, you cannot make this shit up.
...threw a hissy fit when people dared to start protesting outside their homes.
> The opinion from the 9th circuit was that it was oke-dokeily because, and I quote, "required no cognitive exertion, placing it firmly in the same category as a blood draw or fingerprint taken at booking"
You might dislike it, but legally, these are equivalent, with the requirement of a finger being less onerous. Biometrics are public information, like it or now. It's a well-reasoned decision.
Just dealing with the one you seem to put as most important - the 9th circuit's logic is watertight and police have to be able to investigate or a lot of murders will go unsolved. You'd really need to provide a reason why the search was unreasonable to make a point with that one.
It makes a lot of sense to have protections against the police searching phones, homes, businesses, etc. But assuming that those protections aren't at play then it is entirely reasonable that a policeperson can force someone to put their thumb somewhere. The police already have the power to manhandle and imprison people, forced thumblocation is nothing compared to that. What do you want the Supreme court to do here, officially rule that police can coerce not just entire bodies at once, but also thumbs separately and individually? That seems like an unnecessary call for them to make.
> That Court you're so impressed with repeatedly refused to review lower court rulings that police can physically force a suspect to press their finger against their phone or force them to look at it to unlock it with thumbprint or face ID
> Riley has been widely praised as “a sweeping victory for privacy rights”[5] with legal scholars describing the decision as "the privacy gift that keeps on giving."
Since then the Court has picked up another privacy hawk (Justice Gorsuch), and another Justice (Barrett) that's also pretty strong on privacy: https://www.protectprivacynow.org/news/how-will-a-justice-am....