A newly-filed property rights cert petition worth watching. [Disclosure: this one is from our firm, so we won’t be commenting.]
Here are the Questions Presented, which explains the situation:
Maine requires all federally-permitted lobstermen, including Petitioner Frank Thompson, to install a GPS tracker on their fishing boats and submit to 24/7 government surveillance as a condition of keeping their fishing license. The First Circuit held that the Fourth Amendment’s administrative search doctrine authorizes Maine’s trespass—even when lobstermen are not using their private fishing boats for commercial purposes. In doing so, it concluded, in conflict with the Sixth and Ninth Circuits, that Fourth Amendment trespassory protections under United States v. Jones, 565 U.S. 400 (2012), apply to criminal cases only, not to commercial cases.
The questions presented are:
1. Whether Maine’s requirement that lobstermen place a GPS tracking device on their private fishing vessels and submit to 24/7 surveillance constitutes an unreasonable trespassory search in violation of the Fourth Amendment?
2. Whether courts must evaluate the reasonableness of a warrantless administrative search based on the Fourth Amendment’s protections against government trespass, and not solely on a business owner’s reasonable expectations of privacy?
Stay tuned.
Petition for a Writ of Certiorari, Thompson v. Wilson, No. ___ (U.S. Mar. 19, 2026)