{"id":52275,"date":"2022-05-02T07:01:52","date_gmt":"2022-05-02T12:01:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=52275"},"modified":"2022-05-02T07:01:52","modified_gmt":"2022-05-02T12:01:52","slug":"d-d-c-j6-committees-subpoena-to-rnc-not-unreasonably-overbroad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=52275","title":{"rendered":"D.D.C.: J6 Committee’s subpoena to RNC not unreasonably overbroad"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

J6 Committee\u2019s subpoena for records to the RNC does not violate the Fourth Amendment; it\u2019s within Congress\u2019s power. Republican National Committee v. Pelosi<\/a>, 2022 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 78501 (D.D.C. May 1, 2022):<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

The RNC also argues that the subpoena violates the Fourth Amendment\u2019s prohibition on unreasonable searches and seizures because its breadth \u201cexceeds any lawfully authorized purpose\u201d of the Select Committee. See ECF No. 6 \u00b6\u00b6 91\u2013102; ECF No. 8-1 at 22\u201326. The parties dispute whether the RNC has a Fourth Amendment interest in the Salesforce-held information that the subpoena demands. Compare ECF No. 17 at 39, with ECF No. 21 at 18\u201322. Even assuming the RNC retains such an interest, the subpoena does not violate the RNC\u2019s Fourth Amendment rights.<\/p>

The leading Supreme Court case on Fourth Amendment challenges to legislative subpoenas (and one of the \u201cfew federal cases\u201d on point) is McPhaul, 364 U.S. 372. See 1 Bus. & Com. Litig. in Fed. Cts. \u00a7 6:15 (Robert L. Haig, Ed., 5th ed. 2021 update). In McPhaul, a House committee issued to the executive secretary of the Civil Rights Congress a subpoena that demanded production of \u201call records, correspondence[,] and memoranda pertaining to the organization of, the affiliation with other organizations[,] and all monies received or expended by the Civil Rights Congress.\u201d See 364 U.S. at 374. The subpoena\u2019s recipient argued that it was \u201cso broad as to constitute an unreasonable search and seizure in violation of the Fourth Amendment.\u201d Id. at 382. The Supreme Court recognized that the subpoena was \u201cbroad,\u201d but it reasoned that the committee\u2019s inquiry was a \u201crelatively broad one\u201d and thus the \u201cpermissible scope of materials that could reasonably be sought was necessarily equally broad.\u201d See id. And it ultimately held that the subpoena was not so broad \u201csuch as to violate the Fourth Amendment.\u201d Id. at 383.<\/p>

So too here. As discussed above, the subpoena demands documents within the permissible scope of materials that the Select Committee may seek in its investigation. Also as discussed above, the information at issue that could shed some light on the RNC\u2019s political strategy is no more sensitive than the McPhaul subpoena\u2019s demands for information about the Civil Rights Congress\u2019s \u201corganization\u201d and affiliates. Moreover, in this case, unlike in McPhaul, the subpoena is time-limited to a few months of records. Thus, because the subpoena is \u201cnot more sweeping\u201d than the one \u201csustained against challenge[]\u201d in McPhaul, the Court \u201ccannot say that the breadth of the subpoena [is] such as to violate the Fourth Amendment.\u201d See McPhaul, 364 U.S. at 383.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

J6 Committee\u2019s subpoena for records to the RNC does not violate the Fourth Amendment; it\u2019s within Congress\u2019s power. Republican National Committee v. Pelosi, 2022 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 78501 (D.D.C. May 1, 2022):<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-52275","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-overbreadth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52275","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=52275"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52275\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52276,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52275\/revisions\/52276"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=52275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=52275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=52275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}