By Clare E. Maness, JD, & Michael S. Carroll, PhD
For anyone interested in sport law, sports betting, technology, and civil rights, a current federal lawsuit in the Southern District of Iowa brings these topics to the forefront while giving court watchers new possible outcomes to . . . well . . . maybe place a friendly “bet” on. The case of Uwazurike v. State of Iowa (case number 24-146 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Iowa) raises questions about the role of search warrants when it comes to geocompliance technology (here, GeoComply, used by sportsbooks such as DraftKings and FanDuel) in the context of sports betting and criminal investigations.
Background
The state of Iowa legalized online sports betting in May 2019. After a series of interactions with individuals at GeoComply (a geocompliance platform that allows tracking of online activity like sports betting) over the course of a few years, criminal investigators in Iowa began using GeoComply to investigate alleged criminal violations related to sports wagering, tracking sports-betting activity using that geolocation technology. Eventually, these investigators turned their attention to Iowa State University and the University of Iowa. They first identified account numbers associated with wagering at those schools and subsequently subpoenaed records from sports-wagering companies, which led to identification of account holders. And here is the constitutional rub: they conducted their online surveillance without any actual probable cause to believe sports wagering was occurring at the universities and without obtaining any search warrants.
Despite the constitutional problems presented by the Iowa authorities’ approach, prosecutors, having identified individuals associated with gambling activity, took the next step and indicted persons believed to have engaged in underage gambling, identity theft, and sundry other offenses, some of whom are now the plaintiffs in this action filed as Uwazurike v. State of Iowa (2024) and who were members of the University of Iowa, Iowa State, or Ellsworth Community College football, wrestling, basketball, or baseball teams. The GeoComply providers, however, were not so ready to go along with this approach to law enforcement. Earlier this year, in January, GeoComply ended its partnership with the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation. This withdrawal kicked off some inter-agency strife, with Iowa’s Racing and Gaming Commission accusing the state’s Division of Criminal Investigation of withholding information. Plaintiffs also note that multiple agents told them that the state was not targeting them in a criminal investigation but rather was asking them to assist in the investigation of sports-betting companies.
Ultimately, the criminal charges were dropped, with an Iowa state court finding a constitutional violation in the agents’ use of the tracking/geolocation technology without a warrant, but that dismissal obviously did not “fix” the damages suffered by the individuals wrongfully charged with offenses. As such, these individuals have brought suit for civil-rights violations, under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, which provides an avenue for relief for people illegally deprived of their civil rights by state actors. (One should note that the Iowa Racing and Gaming Commission has stated that the criminal investigation did not reveal evidence of “point shaving,” a practice by which athletes may alter their sporting performance to manipulate betting outcomes (Jett, 2024).)
The Players: In the Case and On the Field
The first plaintiff named in the case—the Uwazurike of Uwazurike v. State of Iowa—is, for football fans, none other than Eyioma Uwazurike, whom the Denver Broncos drafted in 2022 (in the fourth round, as the number 116 overall pick). With the criminal allegations swirling, the NFL indefinitely suspended Mr. Uwazurike last year. At the end of July this year, he became eligible to petition for reinstatement, but Colorado Department of Revenue officials and prosecutors for Colorado’s Arapahoe County have been investigating him for possible gambling violations, which could complicate a bid for reinstatement (Buckhalter, 2024), though dismissal of the Iowa criminal charges could weigh in his favor (Heath, 2024).
The other plaintiffs in this civil action were also athletes, and all of them faced possible NCAA sanctions because of the criminal investigation and possible outcomes of it. Noah Shannon, for example, had been a starting defensive lineman for the UI football team. With the investigation, the NCAA suspended him, and he lost his final year of eligibility and a shot at the pros. He suffered these losses despite never being charged criminally—his suspension hinged only on the criminal investigation.
Other plaintiffs suffered actual criminal convictions, as well as athletic setbacks like NCAA revocations of eligibility. Before the State of Iowa’s alleged constitutional wrongdoing came to light to fuel dismissal of criminal charges, multiple plaintiffs pleaded guilty to actual offenses.
On the defendant side of the equation, these plaintiffs are suing the State of Iowa, the Iowa Department of Public Safety, the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation, and multiple individual state agents. Of the latter, the plaintiffs have underscored the role of three specific agents who led the illegal GeoComply searches to track the plaintiffs’ personal activity on their phones—activity which was then used to try to establish probable cause to obtain tainted warrants for the phones. Media sources have revealed evidence suggesting that at least some of the defendants may have had self-serving interests (such as aggrandizement of their department) in mind when they engaged in the controversial behavior (Jett, 2024).
The Claims: Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment Violations
Under the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments, of course, states cannot engage in unreasonable searches and seizures. Plaintiffs here complain that Iowa state officials violated their “constitutional rights by utilizing GeoComply software to illegally, and without a warrant, track Plaintiffs’ activity on their cell phones” (Uwazurike v. State of Iowa, 2024, Compl. 30, ¶ 248). The plaintiffs enjoyed an expectation of privacy in their phones, and the State of Iowa violated that expectation without first obtaining a warrant. Under Title 42, Section 1983, of the U.S. Code, a person can then sue for damages based on this deprivation of a constitutional right by a state actor. Section 1988 provides for recovery of attorney fees for the prevailing parties in such cases.
While media sources have quoted certain legal scholars as suggesting the Iowa authorities’ searches were not illegal (Jett, 2024, April 26; Jett, 2024, May 3), the plaintiffs’ claims may not be so very farfetched, given the U.S. Supreme Court’s trajectory, over the past decade or so, of affirming privacy rights in the face of an ever-increasing potential for technological intrusions. In 2012, in United States v. Jones, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed that government use of a GPS device on a vehicle to monitor that vehicle’s movements, even on public streets (where, hypothetically, a person could simply and legally follow the vehicle around constantly), constitutes a search and thus requires a warrant. The high court did emphasize that physical occupation of private property influenced the decision: the GPS tracker occupied space on a private vehicle. But this fact may not be definitive now, given the court’s subsequent ruling in Carpenter v. United States in 2018, in which the court affirmed that police must obtain a warrant to accesses historical cell-phone records that provide a comprehensive outline of the phone user’s past movements.
In Carpenter, the Supreme Court explicitly rejected the government’s contention that “cell-site records are fair game because they are ‘business records’ created and maintained by the wireless carriers” and that the legal inquiry turned “on a garden-variety request for information from a third-party witness” (Carpenter v. United States, 2018). Now any parsing of Carpenter would allow the casual legal scholar to build arguments to support either side of the aisle here in this Iowa matter, but the fact remains that a user agreement with a sportsbook may not end the inquiry in the defense’s favor in this civil challenge. The Supreme Court is, after all, deeply committed to ensuring “that the ‘progress of science’ does not erode Fourth Amendment protections” (Carpenter v. United States, 2018).
On the topic of any warrants the state did eventually obtain in Iowa (especially the warrants the state ended up getting to seize and search individual phones), the plaintiffs emphasize that these warrants qualify as the proverbial fruit of the poisonous tree—the illegal GeoComply searches.
Other claims build on the basic § 1983 premise and allege a failure to train or supervise and a failure of official policies and customs. Basically, the plaintiffs urge the court to find that Iowa’s training programs (as administered by two named individuals) were inadequate to train agents on proper, constitutional search protocols, and supervisors failed to review adequately certain agents’ work. Likewise, Iowa’s official policies, practices, and customs were inadequate to protect individuals from illegal searches and seizures.
With regard to damages, the plaintiffs are looking for compensation for the deprivation of their constitutional rights; for the humiliation, public ridicule, loss of reputation, and emotional distress they suffered; pain and suffering and possible medical expenses; the expenses associated with bringing suit; and any other expenses provided for by law, including attorney fees. They are also seeking punitive damages.
Procedural Status
The plaintiffs filed their complaint on April 26, 2024. On June 18, 2024, the defendants asked the court to grant them an extension of time for filing their answer to the complaint (or to file a motion to dismiss the action), citing “the State’s immense and unavoidable workload on other matters filed in state and federal courts” as support for granting such an extension (Uwazurike v. State of Iowa, 2024, Defs.’ Mot. To Extend 2). The court allowed the additional time, and the defendants, on July 12, 2024, filed a motion to dismiss, which runs about 317 pages, including a 68-page brief and 246 pages of appendix materials. The thrust of the defendants’ arguments revolves around a lack of “plausible claims,” a failure to show the defendants violated a clearly established constitutional right, and, of course, qualified immunity (Uwazurike v. State of Iowa, 2024, Defs.’ Mot. to Dismiss 2). As one might expect, the defendants insist that the “Plaintiffs also cannot show Defendants caused their damages,” and “[s]ome Plaintiffs do not have cognizable claims,” and the “Plaintiffs may not win a civil recovery for their own illegal activity” (Uwazurike v. State of Iowa, 2024, Defs.’ Mot. to Dismiss 2). To support their contentions, the defendants point outstanding issues, try to distinguish Carpenter, and claim that, “[r]egardless of whether a ‘search’ occurred, once provided to third-party companies, Plaintiffs location data was in an unprotected digital space” (Uwazurike v. State of Iowa, 2024, Defs.’ Mot. to Dismiss, Br. 2, 39). Despite dismissal of many of the criminal cases (and a concomitant lack of actual judgments on the allegations in those cases), the state insists upon maintaining as “fact” its positions that all “Plaintiffs were college athletes who gambled on sporting events in violation of NCAA rules or Iowa law” and that “some Plaintiffs fraudulently used other peoples’ Sportsbook accounts to evade detection” (Uwazurike v. State of Iowa, 2024, Defs.’ Mot. to Dismiss, Br. 4). As of July 25, the plaintiffs have received additional time to respond to the defendants’ motion.
Editor’s Note: Following preparation of this article, on August 9, 2024, the Fifth Circuit held, in a published opinion, that use of geofence warrants violates the Fourth Amendment (United States v. Smith, 2024). As the Fifth Circuit recognized in coming to its conclusion, this decision creates a circuit split with the Fourth Circuit, so the Eighth Circuit will have even more to consider if Uwazurike v. State of Iowa ends up on appeal. A geofence warrant involves law-enforcement personnel specifying a location and time period, and then obtaining a warrant to have a given company comb through their location databases to provide a list of cell phones and affiliated users who appeared in the specified area during the given timeframe. Citing Carpenter v. United States (2018) and Jones v. United States (2012), the Fifth Circuit found in Smith that the use of geofence technology constituted a search, and even with the warrant in the case, that search violated the Fourth Amendment, even if users had opted in to location monitoring by technology providers. The circuit saved the subject evidence from suppression based on the good-faith exception to the warrant requirement only because officers had diligently attempted to ensure that their warrant (again, they had obtained a warrant) complied with Fourth Amendment requirements, including taking the step to consult with the U.S. Attorney’s Office, and these officers had exhibited no malicious intent through their actions. Likewise, the investigation technique was novel and precedent on the issue was extremely limited.
References
United States v. Smith, ___ F.4th ___, No. 23-60321, 2024 U.S. App. LEXIS 20149 (5th Cir. Aug. 9, 2024)
References
Buckhalter, J. (2024, July 23). Suspended Broncos player could face ‘complication’ in reinstatement bid: Report. heavy. https://heavy.com/sports/nfl/denver-broncos/uwazurike-suspension-reinstatement-allen-franklin-myers/.
Heath, J. (2024, March 2). Prosecutors drop charges against Broncos DL Eyioma Uwazurike. Broncoswire.https://broncoswire.usatoday.com/2024/03/02/denver-broncos-news-eyioma-uwazurike-charges-dropped/.
Jett, T. (2024, Apr. 26). Iowa, Iowa State athletes sue state investigators over sports betting probe. Des Moines Register. https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/sports/2024/04/26/iowa-isu-athletes-sue-state-police-offer-betting-probe-dci-hunter-dekkers-eyioma-uwazurike/73468328007/.
Jett, T. (2024, May 3). Iowa agents hoped to change betting laws with college sports gambling probe, emails show. Des Moines Register. https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/crime-and-courts/2024/05/03/iowa-agents-hoped-to-change-betting-laws-with-college-betting-cases/73548298007/.
KCCI Des Moines. (July 16, 2024). Iowa Attorney General asks for dismissal of lawsuit against state in college athlete gambling investigation. KCCI Des Moines 8. https://www.kcci.com/article/iowa-attorney-general-dismissal-lawsuit-against-state-college-athlete-gambling-investigation/61614881.
Carpenter v. United States, 585 U.S. 296 (2018).
United States v. Jones, 565 U.S. 400 (2012).
Compl., ECF No. 1, Uwazurike v. State of Iowa, No. 4:24-CV-00146 (S.D. Iowa Apr. 26, 2024).
Defs.’ Mot., ECF No. 14, Uwazurike v. State of Iowa, No. 4:24-CV-00146 (S.D. Iowa Apr. 26, 2024).
Defs.’ Mot. to Dismiss, ECF No. 17 (& Attach.), Uwazurike v. State of Iowa, No. 4:24-CV-00146 (S.D. Iowa Apr. 26, 2024).
Clare Maness has practiced federal criminal defense since 2006, first with the Office of the Federal Public Defender for the Western District of Michigan and now in private practice. She has also contributed pro bono time to successful prisoner civil-rights actions under Sec. 1983. She is a graduate of the Ave Maria School of Law, where she served as a senior editor of the law review. She is admitted to practice in the State of New Mexico, various federal district and circuit courts, and in the U.S. Supreme Court. She is now pursuing a PhD in Sport Management at Troy University.
