[WillPostForFood]

If we want stronger requirements for warrants regarding data from third parties, we can just pass laws with stronger requirements. The constitution is not a barrier here. Even if had been written 25 years ago it wouldn't have predicted the data dystopia we are in now.

[ceejayoz]

> we can just pass laws with stronger requirements

And SCOTUS can knock them down, or make them irrelevant via qualified immunity.

https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-poli...

"The Reuters analysis supports Sotomayor’s assertion that the Supreme Court has built qualified immunity into an often insurmountable police defense by intervening in cases mostly to favor the police. Over the past 15 years, the high court took up 12 appeals of qualified immunity decisions from police, but only three from plaintiffs, even though plaintiffs asked the court to review nearly as many cases as police did. The court’s acceptance rate for police appeals seeking immunity was three times its average acceptance rate for all appeals. For plaintiffs’ appeals, the acceptance rate was slightly below the court’s average."

"In the cases it accepts, the court nearly always decides in favor of police. The high court has also put its thumb on the scale by repeatedly tweaking the process. It has allowed police to request immunity before all evidence has been presented. And if police are denied immunity, they can appeal immediately – an option unavailable to most other litigants, who typically must wait until after a final judgment to appeal."

[coderaptor]

The Legislature is still ultimately capable of changing the law the Court rules on.

[jfengel]

The legislature is ultimately not capable of anything. Passing legislation requires enormous barriers: the House and the Senate (usually by a wide margin) and the President and not having the Supreme Court just sweep it away.

In some cases, it takes only a single Congressman to prevent a law from being passed. If the minority party is dead set a bill -- if only for political reasons -- it often requires absolute unanimity on the other party to pass it, an unreasonably high bar to pass.

Legislation is nearly always trivial. They are only barely capable of passing even the most basic, crucial, mandatory law appropriating funds for the executive branch -- and that's only possible because the filibuster does not apply to appropriations bills. Real legislation is sometimes bundled into appropriations bills precisely to piggyback on that exception.

Theoretically, the legislature can do lots of stuff. Pragmatically, you can't simply say "well, the legislature should act". There is an enormous thumb on the scale in favor of the status quo.

[ceejayoz]

And the Court can say the new law is unconstitutional on a flimsy pretext, as they’ve done with critical components of the Voting Rights Act.