The U.S. government has charged Samuel Tunick with allegedly typing in a passcode to wipe his phone before officers could search it. “I hope people understand that the charges against me are meant to intimidate people,” he said.
Just another example of the Trump admin trying to intimidate protestors using whatever the fuck they can to bring up whatever charges they can.
Precedent isn’t a permanently binding law. The entire point of the judicial branch is that they get to interpret the law and decide when it applies. Precedent is binding on an individual basis, in that a particular judge or subset of judges are supposed to follow the precedent set by their court, but they have the ability to reinterpret that precedent, it usually just has to be done by the full circuit of judges or a higher court.
What happened to Roe v Wade sucks in a practical cause and effect level, but this process is necessary when you look at it in the context of this very case. If this case were to go south for this guy, you don’t want the precedent to forever be that this behavior is illegal on its face. Especially when decided by potentially one single judge. There has to be a path for a more balanced group of individuals to fix blind spots like that.
Another thing that complicates this is that America isn’t functionally just one nation with a set of laws and federal judges and a constitution, it’s 50 countries each with their own distinct laws, their own constitution, and their own judges. Federal law is just a loose binding box that’s supposed to keep the 50 states from getting too wacky.