High court rules sex offender can challenge GPS monitoring

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court ruled recently that a North Carolina sex offender should have another chance to challenge an order that he wear a GPS monitoring bracelet around the clock and for the rest of his life.

The justices said the state’s highest court must reconsider whether North Carolina violated Torrey Dale Grady’s constitutional rights when it ordered him to wear the ankle bracelet beginning in 2013.

North Carolina is among at least eight states that have a system for lifetime monitoring for convicted sex offenders. More than 40 states impose some kind of monitoring as a condition of probation or release from prison.

Grady argued that the state’s lifetime GPS monitoring system is unreasonable because it allows state officials to enter his home — with or without his permission — to maintain a GPS monitoring base station.

Grady also complains that he must charge the bracelet every day by plugging it into a wall outlet for four to six hours at a time.

State courts rejected his claims, but the Supreme Court said the monitoring qualifies as a search under the Fourth Amendment’s ban on unreasonable searches and seizures and likened it to its last case on GPS devices three years ago.