Brendan Gilligan, Saira Hussain, and Jennifer Lynch of EFF write:
The Constitution prohibits dragnet device searches, especially when those searches are designed to uncover political speech, EFF explained in a friend-of-the-court brief filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit.
The case, Armendariz v. City of Colorado Springs, challenges device and data seizures and searches conducted by the Colorado Springs police after a 2021 housing rights march that the police deemed “illegal.” The plaintiffs in the case, Jacqueline Armendariz and a local organization called the Chinook Center, argue these searches violated their civil rights.
The case details repeated actions by the police to target and try to intimidate plaintiffs and other local civil rights activists solely for their political speech.
Read more at EFF.