Amicus Curiae Brief — Frank Thompson, Petitioner v. Carl Wilson, Commissioner, Maine Department of Marine Resources

No. 25-1105

In the Supreme Court of the United States

FRANK THOMPSON

Petitioner,

v.

CARL WILSON, IN HIS OFFICIAL CAPACITY AS

COMMISSIONER, MAINE DEPARTMENT OF

MARINE RESOURCES

Respondent.

On Petition for a Writ of Certiorari to the United

States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit

BRIEF OF THE AMERICAN FARM BUREAU FEDERATION

AS AMICUS CURIAE IN SUPPORT OF PETITIONER

ELLEN STEEN

TRAVIS CUSHMAN

MICHAEL D. THORP

American Farm Bureau

Federation

600 Maryland Ave. SW

Suite 1000W

Washington, DC 20024

TIMOTHY S. BISHOP

Counsel of Record

BRETT E. LEGNER

Mayer Brown LLP

71 S. Wacker Dr.

Chicago, IL 60606

(312) 782-0600

tbishop@mayerbrown.com

QUESTION PRESENTED

A Maine Department of Marine Resources rule requires all Maine lobstermen who hold federal lobster

fishing permits to install a GPS tracking device on

their vessels and share their location data whenever

those vessels are in the water. Amicus American Farm

Bureau Federation addresses the following question:

Whether the fact that lobster fishing is closely

regulated permits government to track every move of

a vessel in real time, regardless of whether the vessel

is engaged in lobstering or is being used for personal

or non-regulated commercial purposes, or whether

such 24/7 tracking constitutes a warrantless search of

private property prohibited by the Fourth

Amendment.

ii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

QUESTION PRESENTED.......................................... i

TABLE OF AUTHORITIES...................................... iii

INTEREST OF THE AMICUS CURIAE....................1

INTRODUCTION AND SUMMARY OF

ARGUMENT ...............................................................3

ARGUMENT ...............................................................4

I. The Court Should Grant Certiorari To

Afford Businesses Like Farms And

Ranches At Least As Much Protection

From Warrantless Searches As Criminal

Suspects ..................................................................5

II. Search Devices Physically Placed On

Private Property Are Subject To Rigorous

Fourth Amendment Scrutiny That Maine’s

Rule Cannot Survive ..............................................7

A. Physically invasive searches of private

property require a warrant ..............................9

B. The size of the physical invasion

involved in a search is irrelevant ................... 11

C. That Maine regulates lobster fishing

does not excuse the need for a warrant

for its trespass on petitioner’s private

property ........................................................... 13

CONCLUSION .......................................................... 15

iii

TABLE OF AUTHORITIES

Page(s)

Cases

Borden Ranch v. United States Army Corps

of Eng’rs,

537 U.S. 99 (2002) ............................................... 5

Byrd v. United States,

584 U.S. 395 (2018) ............................................. 9

Carpenter v. United States,

585 U.S. 296 (2018) ......................................... 4, 8

Cedar Point Nursery v. Hassid,

594 U.S. 139 (2021) ........................... 5, 10, 12, 14

Chatrie v. United States,

No. 25-112 (U.S. cert. granted Jan. 16,

2026) .................................................................... 8

City of Los Angeles v. Patel,

576 U.S. 409 (2015) ........................................... 14

Entick v. Carrington, 95 Eng. Rep. 807 (C.P.

1765) .................................................................... 9

Florida v. Jardines,

569 U. S. 1 (2013) ................................................ 9

Horne v. Department of Agriculture,

576 U. S. 351 (2015) .......................................... 13

Kaiser Aetna v. United States,

444 U. S. 164 (1979) .......................................... 10

iv

TABLE OF AUTHORITIES—continued

Page(s)

Katz v. United States,

389 U.S. 347 (1967) ................................. 4, 10, 11

Kyllo v. United States,

533 U.S. 27 (2001) ............................................... 8

Loretto v. Teleprompter Manhattan CATV

Corp.,

458 U.S. 419 (1982) ........................................... 12

National Meat Ass’n v. Harris,

565 U.S. 452 (2012) ............................................. 5

National Pork Producers Council v. Ross,

598 U.S. 356 (2022) ............................................. 6

New York v. Burger,

482 U.S. 691 (1987) ................................. 4, 13, 14

Olmstead v. United States,

277 U.S. 438 (1928) ............................................. 8

Palazzolo v. Rhode Island,

533 U. S. 606 (2001) .......................................... 14

Silverman v. United States,

365 U.S. 505 (1961) ....................... 3, 7, 12, 13, 15

United States v. Jones,

565 U.S. 400 (2012) ............... 3, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 15

United States v. Knotts,

460 U.S. 276 (1983) ..................................... 11, 13

v

TABLE OF AUTHORITIES—continued

Page(s)

Other Authorities

James W. Ely, Jr., Property Rights and

Judicial Activism, 1 Geo. J.L. & Pub.

Pol'y 125 (2002) ................................................. 10

Orin S. Kerr, The Two Tests of Search Law:

What Is the Jones Test, and What Does

That Say About Katz?, 103 Wash U.L.

Rev. 309 (2025) .............................................. 4, 11

INTEREST OF THE AMICUS CURIAE1

The American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF)

was formed in 1919 and is the largest nonprofit general farm organization in the United States. Representing about six million member families in all 50

states and Puerto Rico, AFBF’s members grow and

raise every type of agricultural crop and commodity

produced in the United States. AFBF’s mission is to

protect, promote, and represent the interests of American farmers and ranchers.

The Court of Appeals held here that an invasive

tracking device required to be placed on private property as a condition of the property owner’s license to

carry on its trade is not an unconstitutional warrantless search because the placement is required as part

of a regulatory scheme. It did so even though the device tracks the property’s position all of the time—

whether the property is being used for the regulated

activity or is being used for purely personal or for unrelated business purposes. The court deemed this constant tracking “minimally intrusive” (Pet. App. 28a)

and held it constitutionally unproblematic because it

occurs in the context of a “closely-regulated industry.”

Pet. App. 30a. And the court distinguished the host of

decisions from this Court that have found similarly invasive warrantless searches to be unconstitutional because those cases were “criminal in nature and involve[d] government searches to uncover evidence of

criminal activity” (Pet. App. 28a)—a distinction that

Pursuant to Rule 37.6, amicus curiae affirms that no counsel

for a party authored this brief in whole or in part and that no

person other than amicus and its counsel made a monetary contribution to its preparation or submission. Counsel of record for

all parties received notice at least 10 days prior to the due date

of the intention of amicus to file this brief.

1

2

affords criminal suspects far greater Fourth Amendment protection than business people subject to a civil

regulatory scheme.

That ruling, AFBF believes, dangerously undercuts Fourth Amendment protections for farmers and

ranchers. It authorizes physically-invasive monitoring of private property, without a warrant, whenever

government can point to a regulatory violation that

might conceivably be uncovered by the search. See

Pet. App. 29a (because lobster-fishing violations may

occur whenever a vessel is in the water “lobstermen

need to be tracked while they too are in the water”).

That threat is especially acute for agriculture because, for most farm families, the regulated “business

premises” is also home. The tractor sits in the same

yard where the children play; the pickup that hauls

feed is the same truck that drives to church. A rule

that allows warrantless, continuous surveillance of

“closely regulated” business property thus allows warrantless, continuous surveillance of the farm family’s

daily life.

Farmers and ranchers are subject to a host of federal and state laws that are policed by executive agencies with powers to impose penalties, seek injunctions,

or deny licenses or permits. Applying the First Circuit’s reasoning, government agencies may contend

that farms, ranches, and associated facilities can be

forced to host monitoring devices covering regulated

activities, with no regard to whether those devices

also detect farm families engaged in everyday household activities or farm commercial activities that lie

beyond the scope of the regulation.

AFBF believes that the Court of Appeals’ decision

threatens the property rights and personal privacy of

farm and ranch families in ways prohibited by the

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Fourth Amendment and by this Court’s decisions.

Given the vast scope of government regulation at both

federal and state levels, the First Circuit’s approach

would allow a regulated-activity exception broadly to

override Fourth Amendment protections and would

render business people the least protected of all

groups from intensive government surveillance.

AFBF proactively participates as a party litigant

or amicus in many cases that involve issues that impact its members’ interests. To that end, AFBF offers

insights to aid this Court’s consideration of the important issues raised by the Petition for Certiorari.

INTRODUCTION AND SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT

Amicus AFBF submits this brief to explain the importance of maintaining constitutional protections for

farm and ranch families on their own property. The

decision below wrongly allows warrantless on-property-surveillance of activities unrelated to regulated

conduct, which is at the core of Fourth Amendment

protection as properly understood.

In correcting this injustice, this Court can also

bring much-needed clarity to the standards to be applied to warrantless civil searches. As Professor Orin

Kerr has recently explained, there is substantial confusion in the lower courts—manifested in the sharp

and entrenched circuit splits ably described in the Petition—over how to assess the need for a warrant for

searches on private property. Those circuit splits arise

from conflicting understandings of the interplay between two lines of this Court’s decisions, exemplified

by Silverman v. United States, 365 U.S. 505 (1961)

and United States v. Jones, 565 U.S. 400 (2012), which

look to whether the search involves a trespass or

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physical invasion of private property, and Katz v.

United States, 389 U.S. 347 (1967) and New York v.

Burger, 482 U.S. 691 (1987), which focus on privacy

interests other than those rooted in property rights.

As Professor Kerr observes, the lack of guidance

from this Court about how to reconcile these lines of

authority—in particular concerning the relevance of

trespass on and physical invasion of private property

in conducting a search—has resulted in “a remarkable

conceptual uncertainty in Fourth Amendment law.

Every lower court recites that there are two search

tests, but no one knows what one test means or how it

relates to the other.” Orin S. Kerr, The Two Tests of

Search Law: What Is the Jones Test, and What Does

That Say About Katz?, 103 Wash U.L. Rev. 309, 309

(2025). As the Petition points out (Pet. 24 n.12), the

separate opinions in Carpenter v. United States may

have encouraged this confusion. 585 U.S. 296 (2018).

This case, resolved below on the basis of the facts

as pled and hence involving no factual disputes, provides an excellent vehicle to address confusion over

the role of invasions of private property in Fourth

Amendment analysis. It is also an opportunity for the

Court to give guidance regarding how criminal Fourth

Amendment principles apply to civil surveillance on

private property, as well as to address the extent to

which a regulatory scheme immunizes physically invasive searches from Fourth Amendment scrutiny.

ARGUMENT

The Court should grant certiorari because the unjust result below, which allows surveillance on a lobster-boat-owner’s property of wholly private activity,

results from confusion over the meaning of this

Court’s Fourth Amendment precedents. It is time for

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this Court to end that confusion by explaining that

government may not require the installation of surveillance devices on private property that capture significant unregulated conduct unless it first obtains a

warrant. Before turning to the First Circuit’s errors of

law, we first explain why AFBF’s members care

deeply about the question presented here.

I.

The Court Should Grant Certiorari To

Afford Businesses Like Farms And

Ranches At Least As Much Protection

From Warrantless Searches As Criminal

Suspects

Farmers and ranchers are subject to a host of federal and state regulatory schemes policed by government agencies empowered to impose penalties, seek

injunctions, or deny licenses or permits. These include, for example, Clean Water Act permitting requirements under which a farmer may face enormous

penalties for normal farming activities,2 farm labor

laws under which agencies seek to facilitate labor organization on farm property,3 and close federal inspection of meat processing facilities.4 Applying the First

Circuit’s reasoning, government agencies may contend that farms, ranches, and associated facilities

2 E.g., Borden Ranch v. United States Army Corps of Eng’rs, 537

U.S. 99 (2002) (upholding by an equally divided court a $1 million penalty for deep plowing across a drainage feature to plant

deep-rooted crops).

3 E.g., Cedar Point Nursery v. Hassid, 594 U.S. 139 (2021) (hold-

ing a California regulation requiring a farmer to allow frequent

access by labor organizers to be a per se taking under the Fifth

Amendment).

4 E.g., National Meat Ass’n v. Harris, 565 U.S. 452 (2012) (de-

scribing federal regulation of meat-packing plants under the

Federal Meat Inspection Act).

6

must host monitoring devices covering these or countless other regulated activities, with no regard to

whether those devices also detect farm families engaged in everyday household activities or commercial

activities outside the scope of the regulation. One can

imagine, for example, that under the First Circuit’s

cramped reading of the Fourth Amendment, California regulators enforcing that State’s Proposition 12

might demand constant monitoring not only of sow

barns, but of an entire farm to make sure no “cheating” occurs.5

Or consider concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), which are “closely regulated” under

federal and state water-quality laws. Under the First

Circuit’s logic, a State could try to mandate 24/7 sensors on barns, manure lagoons, and field-edge drainages, capturing not just regulated discharge events

but every movement of the farm family living 200

yards away. The farmer’s home is, quite literally, on

the regulated premises.

Pesticide application is another hook. FIFRA and

parallel state pesticide laws make pesticide use one of

the most heavily regulated activities on any farm, and

many state regimes require detailed recordkeeping

tied to the applicator and to the vehicle used to

transport restricted-use products. A logical next step

for an aggressive state regulator is to demand GPS

tracking of every vehicle that moves regulated pesticides—and on most family farms, the vehicle that

hauls a jug of restricted-use herbicide from the co-op

See National Pork Producers Council v. Ross, 598 U.S. 356

(2022); Pet. App. 29a (justifying constant monitoring on the

ground that less extensive monitoring of lobster boats would “incentivize those seeking to avoid detection” of violations).

5

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to the shop is the same pickup that hauls feed, the

same pickup that takes a child's 4-H calf to the county

fair, and the same pickup that drives the family to

church on Sunday. Under the First Circuit's rule, that

truck would be subject to 24/7 monitoring because it

is sometimes used in a closely regulated activity. The

tracked “business premises” in agriculture is the

home. That is why the First Circuit's rule is uniquely

dangerous for farmers and ranchers.

The First Circuit’s decision not to follow the

Jones/Silverman trespass or physical invasion test

because this is a civil, closely-regulated-industry case

rather than a criminal case, App.28a, means that commercial lobstermen have less Fourth Amendment protections than do criminally-accused defendants. That

decision means that, in the circuits that take this narrow view of Fourth Amendment protections, farmers

and their families can be surveilled at home—for most

farm families live on the farm—whenever government

agents can point to a regulatory scheme covering some

aspect of the business operation. Meanwhile, criminal

suspects are protected from searches of their property

unless a warrant has been obtained. That cannot be

right, and as we demonstrate in Part II, it is not:

properly understood, this Court’s precedents mandate

that a warrant be obtained for government searches

that involve the physical invasion of the target’s private property.

II. Search Devices Physically Placed On

Private Property Are Subject To Rigorous Fourth Amendment Scrutiny That

Maine’s Rule Cannot Survive

Many modern Fourth Amendment cases involve

difficult issues raised by advanced technology that allows remote tracking or sensing of persons, places, or

8

things without need to enter the target’s property.

This Court’s recent grant of certiorari to review the

constitutionality of geofencing warrants in Chatrie v.

United States, No. 25-112 (U.S. cert. granted Jan. 16,

2026), provides one example; remote thermal imaging

searches are another. See Kyllo v. United States, 533

U.S. 27 (2001). This Court has long been careful to ensure that when such “[s]ubtler and more far-reaching

means of invading privacy have become available to

the Government” as the result of the “progress of science,” Fourth Amendment protections are not eroded.

Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438, 473-474

(1928).

This case, by contrast, is easy—and the First Circuit got it seriously wrong. Maine requires the physical placement of a GPS device on private business

premises to track activities regardless of whether they

are regulated or not, or are business related or personal. The Fourth Amendment simply does not permit

such surveillance devices placed on private property

without a warrant. See Jones, 565 U.S. at 401, 404

(confirming the Fourth Amendment’s “common-law

trespassory test” and holding that an agent’s physical

trespass on Jones’ car to place a GPS device required

a warrant); Carpenter, 585 U.S. at 309 (“GPS tracking,” which provides a “detailed and comprehensive

record of the person’s movements,” is a search that requires a warrant). The First Circuit’s erroneous decision dangerously mistakes that key rule of law for one

that may be overridden merely by pointing to a regulatory scheme that covers some of the surveilled activities and to the supposedly de minimus nature of the

invasion.

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A. Physically invasive searches of private property require a warrant

The privacy rights protected by the Fourth

Amendment are at their strongest when a government search involves physically invading or trespassing upon a person’s property. See Byrd v. United

States, 584 U.S. 395, 396 (2018) (explaining that “one

who owns or lawfully possesses or controls property

will in all likelihood have a legitimate expectation of

privacy” in that property, and that “‘property concepts’” are instructive in “‘determining the presence or

absence of the privacy interests protected by [the

Fourth] Amendment’”).

This “traditional property-based understanding

of the Fourth Amendment” (Florida v. Jardines, 569

U. S. 1, 11 (2013)) is supported by the plain text of the

Amendment, as Justice Scalia explained writing for

the Court in Jones. See 565 U.S. at 405 (“The text of

the Fourth Amendment reflects its close connection to

property, since otherwise it would have referred

simply to ‘the right of the people to be secure against

unreasonable searches and seizures’; the phrase ‘in

their persons, houses, papers, and effects’ would have

been superfluous”).

It is consistent too with the historical background

of the Amendment, in particular the Framers’ familiarity with Lord Camden’s opinion in Entick v. Carrington, 95 Eng. Rep. 807 (C. P. 1765), extolling the

“sacred” nature of property rights and requiring their

protection from physical invasion. See Jones, 565 U.S.

at 406.

And it is consistent as well with the centrality of

property rights across our Constitution. As this Court

has observed, “protection of property rights is

10

‘necessary to preserve freedom’ and ‘empowers persons to shape and to plan their own destiny in a world

where governments are always eager to do so for

them.’” Cedar Point Nursery v. Hassid, 594 U.S. 139,

171 (2021), quoting Murr v. Wisconsin, 582 U.S. 383,

394 (2017). “The Framers realized that robust protection of the rights of property owners undergirds liberty by diffusing power and protecting individual autonomy from governmental control.” James W. Ely,

Jr., Property Rights and Judicial Activism, 1 Geo. J.L.

& Pub. Pol’y 125, 126 (2002).

Central to a person’s property rights is “the right

to exclude,” which “is ‘universally held to be a fundamental element of the property right” and “one of the

most essential sticks in the bundle of rights that are

commonly characterized as property.” Kaiser Aetna v.

United States, 444 U. S. 164, 176, 179-180 (1979).

For Maine to demand that petitioner’s lobster

boat host a GPS device that tracks the location of the

boat in real time regardless of where it is located or

what it is doing infringes petitioner’s property rights

by prohibiting petitioner from excluding the device—

by removing it or turning it off—when not engaged in

regulated activities.

This should not be a controversial proposition. To

be sure, some of this Court’s decisions, such as Katz,

analyze the Fourth Amendment warrant requirement

by looking to the search target’s privacy interests. But

the appropriate test is situational. Where a search involves government trespassing upon private property,

whether land or chattels, this Court time-and-timeagain has held that the search requires a warrant. As

the Court explained in Jones, “the Katz reasonableexpectation-of-privacy test has been added to, not substituted for, the common-law trespassory test.” 565

11

U.S. at 409. And where a search would involve a trespass or physical invasion, a warrant must be obtained.

See, e.g., United States v. Knotts, 460 U.S. 276, 286

(1983) (Brennan, J., concurring) (“physical intrusion

of a constitutionally protected area in order to obtain

information” is a search requiring a warrant).6

What counts under these decisions is not, as the

court of appeals wrongly assumed, that the search occurred in a criminal investigation context, but that

the search involved the physical invasion of the search

target’s property. It was error for the First Circuit to

apply the Katz test without paying heed to the trespass that occurs when government mandates that citizens host a tracking device on their private property.

B. The size of the physical invasion involved in a search is irrelevant

The court of appeals declined to require a warrant

in part because it thought the mandated placement of

a GPS tracker on petitioner’s vessel was “minimally

intrusive.” Pet. App. 28a. But where a search involves

a physical invasion of private property, the degree of

intrusion is irrelevant; any trespass requires a warrant.

6 Professor Kerr has argued that Jones may be read as requiring

a warrant for searches that involve common law trespass, or alternatively for searches that involve physical intrusions on private property, and that sometimes these approaches may point

to different results given peculiarities of states’ trespass laws.

Kerr, Two Tests, 103 Wash. U.L. Rev. at 311-312. The Court need

not confront that issue here, however, for requiring placement of

a continuously-monitoring GPS device on a vessel is undoubtedly

both a trespass-to-chattels and a physical intrusion into a constitutionally protected area.

12

The inviolability of property rights from even insubstantial physical invasions is well-established.

Consider, for example, Loretto. There, the defendant’s

installation of a ½-inch diameter cable and two 1½cubic-foot boxes on the roof of plaintiff’s building—

which in no way interfered with her use of the property—was held to be a physical taking requiring compensation under the Fifth Amendment. Loretto v. Teleprompter Manhattan CATV Corp., 458 U.S. 419, 424

(1982). When a physical invasion occurs, there is a

taking regardless of “the extent of the occupation,

* * * whether the action achieves an important public

benefit,” or whether it “has only minimal economic impact on the owner.” Id. at 434-435.

Unsurprisingly, that same principle controls in

the Fourth Amendment context, as this Court’s seminal decision in Silverman establishes. There, the warrantless insertion of a spike microphone about 1/8th

of an inch into a home’s wall to overhear the inhabitants’ conversations violated the Fourth Amendment

because this “physical entrench[ment],” as with the

GPS device here, “usurp[ed] part of the petitioners’

house or office.” 365 U.S. at 511. That some physical

invasion occurred was determinative.

This Court has since confirmed that the principle

reaches even intermittent physical invasions. In Cedar Point, the Court held that a regulation granting

union organizers access to farm property for only

three hours per day, 120 days per year, worked a per

se physical taking—rejecting the argument that the

invasion’s temporary or intermittent character made

it anything less. 594 U.S. at 170-174. Maine cannot

escape Silverman’s rule by observing that its GPS device is small, or that it transmits only periodically.

13

Size and frequency do not matter; physical invasion

does.

Under Silverman there is no Fourth Amendment

escape clause for “minimally intrusive” physical invasions of private property. Any “physical intrusion of a

constitutionally protected area in order to obtain information” requires a warrant. Knotts, 460 U.S. at 286

(Brennan, J., concurring) (citing Silverman).

C. That Maine regulates lobster fishing

does not excuse the need for a warrant for its trespass on petitioner’s

private property

The First Circuit’s other rationale for holding

Maine’s regulation to be constitutional was that lobster fishing is a closely regulated industry. That reasoning fares no better, however, in immunizing the

rule from the warrant requirement.

Petitioner does not use his vessel only for lobster

fishing. Petitioner uses the boat for family excursions,

to assist in search and rescue missions, and to

transport needy island residents to mainland medical

treatment. Pet. App. 49a, 180a, 191a, 210a, 217a. Yet

these non-lobstering activities are all tracked by the

GPS device affixed to his boat, which he cannot remove or turn off without risking losing his license.

Those sorts of “basic and familiar uses of property” are

not a special benefit that “the Government may hold

hostage, to be ransomed by the waiver of constitutional protection.” Horne v. Department of Agriculture, 576 U. S. 351, 366 (2015).

Whether or not Burger was correct in stating that

as a general matter closely regulated industries “‘have

such a history of government oversight that no reasonable expectation of privacy * * * could exist for a

14

proprietor over the stock of such an enterprise’” (482

U.S. at 700), an owner does have a reasonable expectation that government will not physically intrude on

private property to search activity that is unrelated to

the regulated business. This Court has warned

against allowing “what has always been a narrow

[closely regulated industry] exception to swallow the

[Fourth Amendment] rule.” City of Los Angeles v. Patel, 576 U.S. 409, 424-425 (2015). Allowing private

property to be surveilled by physically invasive techniques that catch significant unregulated activity is

inconsistent with that “narrow exception” principle.

Monitoring significantly more activity than is needed

to enforce a regulation cannot conceivably be justified

as a reasonable search.

Again, physical takings cases are instructive in illustrating that the existence of a regulatory scheme

does not trump constitutional rights. California

closely regulates union organizers’ interactions with

businesses and their employees, among other things

by requiring that farmers allow union personnel to enter their private property to organize agricultural

workers. Nevertheless, that regulatory context does

not immunize California from takings claims. To the

contrary, this Court held in Cedar Point Nursery that

a state agency rule requiring farmers to allow agricultural union organizers to access their farms on a regular basis or face sanctions for unfair labor practices

effectively granted the unions an easement, and that

this physical invasion of property was a per se taking

requiring compensation. 594 U.S. at 172 (“These sorts

of physical appropriations constitute the ‘clearest sort

of taking,’ Palazzolo v. Rhode Island, 533 U. S. 606,

617 (2001), and we assess them using a simple, per se

rule”).

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There is no reason to think that the Fourth

Amendment is the poor relation to the Takings

Clause, offering less protection for private property

and the privacy it affords to citizens. To the contrary,

Silverman and Jones, among other cases, recognize

that invasions of private property to conduct searches

are the easy case for finding a warrant to be required.

Only upon clear proof that a physical invasion is necessary and narrowly tailored to serve important regulatory goals can government evade the warrant requirement. Constant GPS monitoring of a lobsterman’s location when he is not lobster fishing does not

come close to satisfying that standard.

CONCLUSION

This Court should grant the petition for certiorari.

Respectfully submitted.

ELLEN STEEN

TRAVIS CUSHMAN

MICHAEL D. THORP

American Farm Bureau

Federation

600 Maryland Ave. SW

Suite 1000W

Washington, DC 20024

TIMOTHY S. BISHOP

Counsel of Record

BRETT E. LEGNER

Mayer Brown LLP

71 S. Wacker Dr.

Chicago, IL 60606

(312) 782-0600

tbishop@mayerbrown.com

Counsel for Amicus Curiae

APRIL 2026