On March 30, 2018, Solicitor General Noel J. Francisco filed a motion with the U.S. Supreme Court in United States v. Microsoft Corporation that seeks to vacate the judgment of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in the case (which held in favor of Microsoft) and to remand the case with directions
Solicitor General
Congress Enacts CLOUD Act within Omnibus Spending Bill to Address Overseas Storage of Electronic Data, Potentially Mooting Supreme Court’s Pending Microsoft Case
By Conor Duffy & Kathleen Porter on
On March 23, 2018, the President signed into law the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2018 (H.R. 1625), an omnibus spending bill that includes the Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data Act (the CLOUD Act). Among other provisions, the CLOUD Act amends the Stored Communications Act of 1986 (18 U.S.C. §§ 2701-2712, hereinafter the…
Solicitor General Urges Supreme Court Review of Second Circuit Microsoft Decision
By Conor Duffy on
Posted in Enforcement + Litigation
On June 23, 2017, the Office of the Solicitor General (OSG) filed a petition for a writ of certiorari with the United States Supreme Court requesting reversal of a 2016 decision in which the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit quashed a warrant obtained by the Department of Justice (DOJ) under the Stored Communications Act (SCA) seeking the contents of a Microsoft customer’s emails.
In its July, 2016 decision in United States v. Microsoft Corp., a Second Circuit panel unanimously held that the DOJ’s attempt to procure the contents of the emails – which allegedly pertained to illegal drug trafficking – via an SCA warrant constituted an impermissible extraterritorial application of the SCA because the server on which the emails were stored was located in Ireland. The Second Circuit subsequently denied a request for an en banc rehearing in January, 2017 (see previous analysis of that denial here).
Continue Reading Solicitor General Urges Supreme Court Review of Second Circuit Microsoft Decision