Two SCOTUS summary reversals: a notable sex-offender monitoring issue and another AEDPA enforcement

In addition to granting cert on a bunch of Kansas capital cases, the US Supreme Court this morning issued two short per curiam summary reversals today in Grady v. North Carolina, No. 14-593 (S. Ct. March 30, 2015) (available here), and Woods v. Donald, No. 14-618 (S. Ct. March 30, 2015) (available here).  The second of these rulings is just another example of the Justices helping a circuit (this time the Sixth) better understand that AEDPA precludes a habeas grant unless and until an "underlying state-court decision [is] 'contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established Federal law, as determined by' [the Supreme Court]."  

But the first of these rulings are notable because it clarifies and confirms that the Fourth Amendment is applicable to sex offender monitoring.  Here are key passages from the ruling in Grady:

Petitioner Torrey Dale Grady was convicted in North Carolina trial courts of a second degree sexual offense in 1997 and of taking indecent liberties with a child in 2006. After serving his sentence for the latter crime, Grady was ordered to appear in New Hanover County Superior Court for a hearing to determine whether he should be subjected to satellite-based monitoring (SBM) as a recidivist sex offender.  See N. C. Gen. Stat. Ann. §§14–208.40(a)(1), 14– 208.40B (2013).  Grady did not dispute that his prior convictions rendered him a recidivist under the relevant North Carolina statutes.  He argued, however, that the monitoring program — under which he would be forced to wear tracking devices at all times — would violate his Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures.  Unpersuaded, the trial court ordered Grady to enroll in the program and be monitored for the rest of his life....

The only explanation provided below for the rejection of Grady’s challenge is [a] passage from [a prior state ruling].  And the only theory we discern in that passage is that the State’s system of nonconsensual satellite-based monitoring does not entail a search within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment.  That theory is inconsistent with this Court’s precedents....

[T]he State argues that we cannot be sure its program for satellite-based monitoring of sex offenders collects any information.  If the very name of the program does not suffice to rebut this contention, the text of the statute surely does....  The State’s program is plainly designed to obtain information.  And since it does so by physically intruding on a subject’s body, it effects a Fourth Amendment search.

That conclusion, however, does not decide the ultimate question of the program’s constitutionality.  The Fourth Amendment prohibits only unreasonable searches.  The reasonableness of a search depends on the totality of the circumstances, including the nature and purpose of the search and the extent to which the search intrudes upon reasonable privacy expectations.  See, e.g., Samson v. California, 547 U. S. 843 (2006) (suspicionless search of parolee was reasonable); Vernonia School Dist. 47J v. Acton, 515 U. S. 646 (1995) (random drug testing of student athletes was reasonable).  The North Carolina courts did not examine whether the State’s monitoring program is reasonable — when properly viewed as a search — and we will not do so in the first instance.