No. 14-5123
Huff, et al. v. Spaw
Page 7
concurring). Other courts have also applied Katz’s reasonable-expectation test to assess whether
a communication is protected under Title III. See Kee v. City of Rowlett, 247 F.3d 206, 211–12
(5th Cir. 2001); United States v. Turner, 209 F.3d 1198, 1200 (10th Cir. 2000); United States v.
McKinnon, 985 F.2d 525, 527 (11th. Cir. 1993); United States v. McIntyre, 582 F.2d 1221, 1223
(9th Cir. 1978). The statutory history of Title III also supports such an application. S. Rep. No.
1097, 90th Cong., 2d Sess. (1968), reprinted in 1968 U.S.C.C.A.N 2112, 2178. In articulating
his well-known test, Justice Harlan wrote that, in order to demonstrate a reasonable expectation
of privacy,
[t]here is a two-fold requirement, first that a person have exhibited an actual
(subjective) expectation of privacy and, second, that the expectation [must] be one
that society is prepared to recognize as “reasonable.” Thus a man’s home is, for
most purposes, a place where he expects privacy, but objects, activities, or
statements that he exposes to the “plain view” of outsiders are not “protected”
because no intention to keep them to himself has been exhibited. On the other
hand, conversations in the open would not be protected against being overheard,
for the expectation of privacy under the circumstances would be unreasonable.
Katz, 389 U.S. at 361 (Harlan, J., concurring).
Courts generally refer to Katz’s reasonable-expectation test as having a subjective part
and an objective part, but the division of labor between these two parts is ill-defined in the Title
III context.4 Some courts, including ours, limit the subjective part to the issue of whether a
person held an internal belief in an expectation of privacy from interception. See Dorris,
179 F.3d at 425 (“In the present case, the frank nature of the employees’ conversations makes it
obvious that they had a subjective expectation of privacy. After all, no reasonable employee
4
The precise contours of the subjective and objective parts of the Katz test are somewhat ambiguous in the
Fourth Amendment context as well. The question of whether a person exhibited an expectation of privacy without
outward conduct (rather than mere belief), or failed to do so because he exposed his activities to outsiders, Katz,
389 U.S. at 361 (Harlan, J., concurring), sometimes falls within the subjective part of the test. See, e.g., Bond v.
United States, 529 U.S. 334, 338 (2000) (holding that defendant satisfied the subjective-expectation requirement
because he, “by his conduct, has exhibited an actual expectation of privacy”) (emphasis added). Other times, this
question falls under the objective part of the reasonable-expectation test. See, e.g., California v. Greenwood,
486 U.S. 35, 39–40 (1988) (holding that defendants lacked an objectively reasonable expectation of privacy because
they “exposed their garbage to the public”). On occasion, the issue is analyzed under both the subjective
and objective parts. See, e.g., United States v. Barrows, 481 F.3d 1246, 1248–49 (10th Cir. 2007) (noting that
defendant’s “failure to password protect his computer” made the court hesitant “to conclude that [he] harbored a
subjective expectation of privacy” and holding that defendant’s failure to “take affirmative measures to limit other
employee’s access” to his computer rendered his expectation of privacy, to the extent that it existed, objectively
unreasonable).