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Megan Crowley

Megan Crowley is a nationally recognized litigator who serves as co-chair of Covington’s Government Litigation practice. In her practice, Megan draws upon her experience at the U.S. Department of Justice where she litigated constitutional, statutory, and administrative law cases of national significance. In addition to her federal practice, Megan has extensive experience challenging unconstitutional state actions, and defending against novel uses of state consumer protection laws by State Attorneys General.

Most recently, The American Lawyer named Megan “Litigator of the Week” for her successes in obtaining a preliminary injunction against the state of Montana’s ban of TikTok and securing the complete dismissal of a consumer protection lawsuit brought by the Indiana Attorney General. Megan also was a key member of the Covington team that represented TikTok in its successful challenge to the Trump Administration’s efforts to ban the app, as well as the team that represented Xiaomi Corporation in its successful challenge to the Department of Defense designation that would have banned the company from U.S. financial markets.

Megan has particular expertise representing technology companies in cutting-edge litigation relating to data privacy, and in 2022, she was named a Law360 Rising Star in Privacy. Megan also regularly represents clients in litigation under the Administrative Procedure Act, as well as disputes related to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, government demands for data under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, and the First Amendment.

Megan maintains a robust pro bono practice, focused on civil rights litigation. She played a central role on the team representing the University of California in its challenge to the government’s rescission of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, obtaining a nationwide injunction and, ultimately, a 5-4 victory in the U.S. Supreme Court.

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On September 16, the Fifth Circuit issued its decision in NetChoice L.L.C. v. Paxton, upholding Texas HB 20, a law that limits the ability of large social media platforms to moderate content and imposes various disclosure and appeal requirements on them.  The Fifth Circuit vacated the district court’s preliminary injunction, which previously blocked the Texas Attorney General from enforcing the law.  NetChoice is likely to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to review the Fifth Circuit’s decision.Continue Reading Fifth Circuit Upholds Texas Law Restricting Online “Censorship”

Last Thursday, the Eastern District of Virginia in United States v. Chatrie, No. 19-cr-00130, 2022 WL 628905, denied a motion to suppress evidence obtained from Google pursuant to a geofence search warrant.  Geofence warrants are a relatively new investigative tool that target private companies’ databases of location data, compelling these companies to produce the location data of every user that was in a particular area over a particular span of time.  The court invalidated the warrant for lack of particularized probable cause, but declined to suppress the evidence obtained from Google—which linked the defendant to the scene of a 2019 bank robbery—because the officers sought the warrant in good faith.
Continue Reading Federal Court Expresses Skepticism About Validity of Geofence Warrants But Declines Suppression Remedy

On August 27, 2021, Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker signed into law the Protecting Household Privacy Act (“PHPA”).  The law governs how, and under what conditions, Illinois law enforcement agencies may acquire and use data from household electronic devices, commonly referred to as “smart devices” or the “internet of things.”  The…
Continue Reading Illinois Enacts Protecting Household Privacy Act

Last week, the Ninth Circuit held in United States v. Wilson, No. 18-50440, 2021 WL 4270847, that a law enforcement officer violated a criminal defendant’s Fourth Amendment rights when he opened images attached to the defendant’s emails without a warrant, even though the images had previously been flagged as child sexual abuse materials (“CSAM”) by Google’s automated CSAM-detection software.  The court based its ruling on the private search exception to the Fourth Amendment, which permits law enforcement to conduct a warrantless search only to the extent the search was previously conducted by a private party.  Because no individual at Google actually opened and viewed the images flagged as CSAM, the court held that law enforcement “exceeded the scope of the antecedent private search,” thereby “exceed[ing] the limits of the private search exception.”  Op. at 20-21.
Continue Reading Ninth Circuit’s Interpretation of Private Search Exception to the Fourth Amendment Contributes to “Growing Tension” Among Circuit Courts