Richard E. Myers II

Richard Ernest Myers II (born 1967)^[1] is an American lawyer and jurist serving as the chief United States district judge of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina. He was appointed in 2019 by President Donald Trump, and he has been the chief judge of the district court since 2021. Before his appointment, Myers was a professor at the University of North Carolina School of Law.

Myers was born in 1967 in Kingston, Jamaica. He moved with his family to Wilmington, North Carolina, as a child.^[2][3] His voter registration states that he belongs to "two or more races."^[3]

Myers graduated from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington in 1989 with a Bachelor of Arts, summa cum laude, followed by a Master of Arts in 1994. He worked as a reporter for the Star-News from 1991 to 1995, where he covered the murder of James R. Jordan Sr., the father of Michael Jordan.^[3] He then attended the University of North Carolina School of Law, where he was an articles editor for the North Carolina Law Review.^[4] He graduated in 1998 with a Juris Doctor, magna cum laude, and Order of the Coif membership.^[1]

Upon graduation from law school, Myers served as a law clerk to Judge David B. Sentelle of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. He then worked in private practice at O'Melveny & Myers. He previously served as an Assistant United States Attorney for the Central District of California and later the Eastern District of North Carolina. While a federal prosecutor, Myers prosecuted a wide variety of crimes including counterfeiting, narcotics, and firearms offenses.^[4] Myers was the Henry Brandis Distinguished Professor of Law and Director of Trial Advocacy at the University of North Carolina School of Law, where his teaching and scholarship focused on criminal law.^[4] He joined UNC as a faculty member in 2004, and left in 2019 upon becoming a judge.^[3]

At UNC, Myers served as the advisor to the law school's Federalist Society chapter.^[3]

On August 14, 2019, President Donald Trump announced his intent to nominate Myers to serve as a United States district judge for the United States District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina. On September 9, 2019, his nomination was sent to the Senate. He has been nominated to the seat vacated by Malcolm Jones Howard, who assumed senior status on December 31, 2005.^[5] Myers was nominated to a seat that had been vacant since December 31, 2005, at the time was the longest federal judicial vacancy.^[6] On September 11, 2019, a hearing on his nomination was held before the Senate Judiciary Committee.^[7] On October 31, 2019, his nomination was reported out of committee by a 16–6 vote.^[8] On December 4, 2019, the United States Senate invoked cloture on his nomination by a 72–22 vote.^[9] On December 5, 2019, his nomination was confirmed by a 68–21 vote.^[10] He received his judicial commission on December 10, 2019. Myers became chief judge in January 2021.^[11] He maintains chambers in Wilmington.^[12]

Myers has been a member of the Federalist Society since 2004. He has been a member of the National Rifle Association of America since 2010. He has been a member of the Christian Legal Society since 2004, of which he serves as a faculty advisor.^[1]

In 2022, Myers concluded that a Civil War amnesty law passed by Congress in 1872 essentially repealed the 14th Amendment's "disqualification clause," which prohibited officeholders from returning to elected positions if they supported an insurrection.^[13] Myers agreed that the Amnesty Act of 1872 applied not only retroactively to Confederate officials, but also in perpetuity regarding future rebellions. This interpretation was later rejected by an appeals court, which ruled that this law applied only to people who committed "constitutionally wrongful acts" before 1872.^[14][15][16]

On February 5, 2024, Myers concluded that the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution offered no protection to a user’s files contained in a private Google Drive account.^[17] Myers reasoned that Google’s terms of service, which provide that Google “may” review files for spam, abuse, and illegal content, were sufficient to completely eliminate a user’s reasonable expectation of privacy. Myers thus concluded that the government could freely review any file on any person’s Google Drive without a warrant or any other Fourth Amendment restriction. Myers alternatively analogized Google Drive files to an automobile, asserting that digital files could be warrantlessly searched on that additional basis.

On appeal, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit rejected each point, finding that Myers “erred across the board.” ^[18] Regarding the automobile analogy, the appellate court said “[w]e need not spend much time debunking this line of reasoning, as even a cursory analysis demonstrates why the district court’s application of that exception was misguided.” In particular, it held that Google Drive files are unlike automobiles in any relevant sense, and rejected Myers holding on that basis. Slip Op at 31 ^[18] (“But, oddly, [Myers] nonetheless analogized digital files to vehicles and applied the automobile exception.”)

It also gave three reasons for rejecting Myers reliance on Google’s Terms of Service, using binding precedent from the Supreme Court and commonsense logic.

First, the Fourth Circuit explained that Google’s ability to review files does not give the government “unfettered access to those same files.” Google’s Terms of Service are an agreement between the user and Google; the government is a nonparty to that agreement and has no rights under it.

Second, the Fourth Circuit cited 60 years of binding Supreme Court precedent rejecting Myers’s conclusion, including the Supreme Court’s landmark 1967 decision in Katz v. United States. In Katz, the Supreme Court rejected a warrantless wiretap of a payphone that was enclosed in a telephone booth. “[E]ven though telephone companies retained the right to monitor calls for illegal conduct,” the Court ruled that a user still retained a reasonable expectation of privacy “that the words he utters into the mouthpiece will not be broadcast to the world.” ^[18] While a caller may have a somewhat diminished expectation of privacy, it would be wrong to say that callers had absolutely no reasonable expectation whatsoever that their private calls would remain private. Based on the Supreme Court’s decision in Katz, “courts have long held that a service provider’s ability to monitor how its customers use the provided services does not negate a customer’s reasonable expectation of privacy against the government.” That established rule of law led the Fourth Circuit to reject Myers’s opinion. Accordingly, the Fourth Circuit concluded that Myers erred in claiming that Google’s access to Google Drive files also allowed the government unlimited access to all users’ files indefinitely.

Third, the Fourth Circuit relied on a commonsense analogy to hotel rooms as a reason to reject Myers ruling. The court explained that “Hotel guests . . . know housekeeping shares a key to their room, and they know that housekeeping will use that key from time to time to come in, tidy up, and do their job.” ^[18] “But a hotel guest would never expect the police to barge in uninvited without a warrant, turn their room upside down, and search for . . . contraband.” Accordingly, precedent has long established that hotel guests “have a reasonable, yet diminished, expectation of privacy in their hotel room” even though a private company (the hotel) has some access to the area. Applying the analogy to a hotel, the Fourth Circuit rejected Myers reasoning that Google’s access to Google Drive enabled the government to rife through Google Drive files. ^[18] Much like the government may not conduct freewheeling searches of a hotel guest’s luggage based on housekeeping’s access to the room, it similarly may not conduct freewheeling searches of Google Drive files based on Google’s access to the files.

Based on this reasoning, the Fourth Circuit explicitly rejected Myers ruling allowing the government unlimited access to Google Drive files, instead finding that the warrantless search “was an unreasonable search in violation of the Fourth Amendment.” ^[18]

• List of African-American federal judges
• List of African-American jurists

• Richard E. Myers II at the Biographical Directory of Federal Judges, a publication of the Federal Judicial Center.