"FBI Violated Constitutional Rights of Hundreds of Americans by Raiding Safety Deposit Boxes, Appeals Court Rules
The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals found the bureau violated U.S. Private Vaults box holders’ Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable searches and seizures by opening and cataloging the contents of 1,400 safe deposit boxes.
The FBI searched the private boxes without individual criminal warrants for each.
The ruling was made on January 23 but only made public on Wednesday.
The court’s decision reversed a 2022 lower court ruling siding with Biden’s FBI.
The new ruling requires federal officials to destroy any inventory records of the hundreds of box holders not charged with a crime.
Agents took about $86 million in cash from the boxes in the March 2021 raid, as well as a trove of jewelry, gold bars, coins, silver, and other valuables, much of which belonged to innocent civilians who were not accused of crimes.
Circuit Judge Milan D. Smith Jr. wrote that it was “particularly troubling” that the government couldn’t explain the limitations to these types of inventory searches and questioned how they differed from the “limitless searches of an individual’s personal belongings” like those seen in colonial America.
“It was those very abuses of power, after all, that led to the adoption of the Fourth Amendment in the first place,” Smith wrote."
