Overview
- The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled on September 17, 2026 that customs officers may conduct manual, on-site searches of travelers' cellphones at borders and airports without a warrant, probable cause, or reasonable suspicion.
- The court treated airports as the "functional equivalent" of international borders and limited its holding to manual inspections, explicitly leaving open whether more intrusive forensic or off-site data extractions require heightened suspicion.
- Judge Eunice C. Lee concurred in the judgment while warning that treating cellphone searches as routine risks eroding privacy protections because phones contain large amounts of sensitive personal and journalistic material.
- Civil liberties and press groups including the Knight First Amendment Institute, the Reporters Committee, and the Cato Institute sharply criticized the decision and have signaled further challenges and petitions for Supreme Court review in related cases.
- Practical effects include greater risk that privileged communications and journalists' confidential sources could be exposed at ports of entry and a renewed legal fight over whether modern digital devices deserve special Fourth Amendment protection.