Utah v. Valdez (2022)

The American Civil Liberties Union of Utah and the national office of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has filed an amicus curiae (friend of the court) brief along with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) in the case of Utah v. Valdez, which was argued in front of the Supreme Court of Utah on March 16, 2022.

For the first time, Utah's highest court will address the question of whether a person’s refusal to unlock an encrypted mobile phone can be used by the State to imply guilt against that person in a criminal trial.

The circumstances of this case are unique because they did not exist twenty years ago, let alone in the 1790s when the Fifth Amendment’s protection against self-incrimination was added to the U.S. Constitution. That is because this case involves the question of whether a person’s refusal to unlock an encrypted mobile phone can be used by the State to imply guilt against that person in a criminal trial.