WaPo: Will the Supreme Court agree to hear the Fourth Amendment cell-site cases? (And should they?)

WaPo: Will the Supreme Court agree to hear the Fourth Amendment cell-site cases? (And should they?) by Orin Kerr:

As John Elwood noted recently at SCOTUSblog, the Supreme Court has relisted a set of pending cert petitions on whether the Fourth Amendment protects historical cell-site data. The relisting means that the justices didn’t turn down the petitions at the usual time. They are holding the petitions, deferring a decision on whether to grant them. That’s usually a sign of some interest at the court. How much interest there is, we don’t yet know.

I have mixed views on whether the court should take these cases. On one hand, there’s no split. Every circuit court and state supreme court to rule on the issue has ruled that the Fourth Amendment does not protect historical cell-site data. The cert petitions claim a circuit split with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit, but I don’t think that’s right. The 3rd Circuit merely speculated about the possibility of Fourth Amendment protection in the course of making a statutory ruling.