Grady v. North Carolina

**Question presented** Did North Carolina’s law that forces a convicted sex offender to wear a satellite‑tracking ankle bracelet count as a “search” under the Fourth Amendment, and if so, is that search unreasonable? **Holding** The United States Supreme Court said yes – attaching a tracking device to a person’s body to monitor his movements is a Fourth Amendment search. Because the North Carolina courts treated the program as if it weren’t a search, the Court vacated (set aside) the state‑high‑court’s decision and sent the case back for the state courts to decide whether the search is reasonable. **Core reasoning in plain language** * The Court relied on its earlier decisions in *United States v. Jones* (which held that putting a GPS on a car and watching where it goes is a search) and *Florida v. Jardines* (which said that physically intruding on a protected area to gather information is a search). Both cases teach that a search occurs when the government physically intrudes on something private in order to collect information. * An ankle‑bracelet is attached to a person’s body, not to a vehicle or a house, but the principle is the same: the government is physically intruding on a part of the person to learn where that person goes. Therefore the monitoring program is a search. * The fact that the program is “civil” (a non‑criminal administrative program) does not change the analysis. The Fourth Amendment protects against unreasonable searches in both criminal and civil contexts, as the Court noted in cases like *Ontario v. Quon* and *Camara v. Municipal Court*. * The Court did not decide whether the search is reasonable; it only said the lower courts got the first step wrong by saying it wasn’t a search at all. The state now has to consider the total circumstances—such as the purpose of the monitoring and how invasive it is—to determine if the search meets the Fourth Amendment’s reasonableness requirement. **Vote breakdown** The opinion is *per curiam* (issued in the name of the Court rather than a specific justice), and no vote count or list of justices joining a majority or dissent was provided in the text.