Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/17pdf/16-402_h315.pdf
Page Number: 103

Cite as:  585 U. S. ____ (2018) 

5 

GORSUCH, J., dissenting 

at 588.  I confess I still don’t see it.  Consenting to give a
third party access to private papers that remain my prop-
erty  is  not  the  same  thing  as  consenting  to  a  search  of 
those papers by the government.  Perhaps there are excep-
tions,  like  when  the  third  party  is  an  undercover  govern-
ment  agent.  See  Murphy,  The  Case  Against  the  Case
Against  the  Third-Party  Doctrine:  A  Response  to  Epstein 
and  Kerr,  24  Berkeley  Tech.  L. J.  1239,  1252  (2009);  cf. 
Hoffa  v.  United  States,  385  U. S.  293  (1966).    But  other-
wise this conception of consent appears to be just assump-
tion  of  risk  relabeled—you’ve  “consented”  to  whatever 
risks are foreseeable. 

Another  justification  sometimes  offered  for  third  party
doctrine is clarity.  You (and the police) know exactly how 
much  protection  you  have  in  information  confided  to  oth-
ers:  none.  As  rules  go,  “the  king  always  wins”  is  admi- 
rably clear.  But the opposite rule would be clear too: Third
party  disclosures  never  diminish  Fourth  Amendment 
protection (call it “the king always loses”).  So clarity alone 
cannot justify the third party doctrine. 

In  the  end,  what  do  Smith  and  Miller  add  up  to?    A 
doubtful  application  of  Katz  that  lets  the  government
search almost whatever it wants whenever it wants.  The 
Sixth Circuit had to follow that rule and faithfully did just 
that, but it’s not clear why we should. 

* 

There’s a second option.  What if we dropped Smith and 
Miller’s third party doctrine and retreated to the root Katz 
question  whether  there  is  a  “reasonable  expectation  of 
privacy” in data held by third parties?  Rather than solve 
the  problem  with  the  third  party  doctrine,  I  worry  this
option  only  risks  returning  us  to  its  source:  After  all,  it 
was  Katz  that  produced  Smith  and  Miller  in  the  first 
place. 

Katz’s  problems  start  with  the  text  and  original  under-