District court of appeals. In a stunning ruling, or at least stunning to me, the 3th circuit district court of appeals decided basically that even though a law might be written crappily it still needs to work the way it was written. The part of the law in question, The Stored Communications Act, is about the federal government getting cell phone use location data from cell phone companies without having to have a warrant. The law gives the Fed the right to demand such data, but as written, a local or district court can require the Fed to get a warrant, or the federal judge can just put out a standing order that says “Hey if you want cell phone tower use-age data in my district then you need a warrant.”.
The law was passed by congress a while ago and was somewhat ambiguous on how it was supposed to be applied. In essence it gave the Fed the “data with no warrant” right but it also granted a “Oh, no not in my district bitches” right to the district judges. These seem like opposing powers, but in reality I like how this law works. Basically Congress left the decision to allow or disallow warrantless data collection up to the individual district court judges, something I think it needs to do more often.
I liked this ruling, even if I wasn’t a fan of the original law, and I liked it for two reasons. Firstly it’s a power to the people issue. I personally am in favor of decisions about how things should work being granted to the individuals that have to live with the local consequences. In this case, it’s not that big of a deal and in reality no real power was granted to local authorities because federal district judges are appointed and not elected, but still it feels good. Secondly the court didn’t decide to nullify a law instead of uphold it. Too many times the courts have been used to override laws enacted by Congress merely on the pretense that the law was badly written or is impossible to enforce. THAT’S NOT WHAT THE COURTS ARE FOR. In extreme cases the Supreme Court can rule that some law or other violates the terms of the constitution, but on no other grounds are the courts supposed to be able to make or destroy laws. They do it all the time though. I feel we’ve become complacent as a society to this because in the end it’s easier just to let the courts nullify a bad law than it is to either kill it in infancy in Congress or go through the law making process all over again to rewrite the law. I was glad to see that the appeals court decided to take the right road and uphold the law as it was written, even if it seems to have been written badly.
