[qingcharles]

SCOTUS doesn't always make shitty decisions. Sometimes dozens of lower courts will all make a shitty decision and then it gets to SCOTUS and they somehow use their greater resources to produce a better decision contrary to everyone's expectations.

IIRC pretty much 99% of state and fed courts had ruled against the warrant requirement for GPS tracking until it hit SCOTUS and they went the opposite direction (just): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Jones_(2012)

[Retric]

2012 was a very different court.

  Gorsuch, Neil M.        April 10, 2017  
  Kavanaugh, Brett M.     October 6, 2018  
  Barrett, Amy Coney      October 27, 2020  
  Jackson, Ketanji Brown  June 30, 2022

[skissane]

That 2012 decision was unanimous, including all the conservatives. Roberts, Thomas and Alito all held GPS tracking without a warrant to be unconstitutional, along with Scalia (now deceased).

If the exact same case came before the Court today, would it rule differently? I doubt. One must assume Roberts, Thomas and Alito would rule the same way. Ideologically, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett are all less conservative than Thomas and Alito, more conservative than Roberts – which suggests if Roberts, Thomas and Alito are all ruling the same way, probably Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett would too. And Jackson is both a liberal, and has been seen to be defendant-friendly even when the other liberals wouldn't be (see when she joined all but of the conservatives in the recent J6 case, while Barrett joined the remaining liberals). So probably, that case would go the same way today as it did in 2012.

Now, this is a separate issue, so the outcome of that 2012 case isn't decisive in how this case would be decided (if it ever reaches SCOTUS). But it would be wrong to assume that SCOTUS becoming significantly more conservative is necessarily going to change the outcome.

[qingcharles]

Amen to that, I mentioned that above too :)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41084212

[ushiroda80]

The Supreme Court has been nearly perfectly consistently shitty in the last 5 years.