In the case of Lewis et al. v. United States (1928), the petitioners were indicted for conspiracy to violate prohibition laws and appealed their convictions on grounds that they had been obtained through illegal wiretapping by federal agents. The Supreme Court held that evidence gathered from wiretaps placed on telephone lines outside a person's home did not constitute a violation of the Fourth Amendment, which protects against unreasonable searches and seizures, or Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination because there was no physical invasion into the defendants' premises. This decision established precedent allowing law enforcement agencies to use evidence collected through wiretap methods in criminal prosecutions until it was overturned by Katz v. United States in 1967.

In the dissenting opinion for Lewis et al. v. United States, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., joined by Justice Louis Brandeis, disagreed with the majority's decision to uphold a federal law that made it illegal for anyone who had been convicted of a crime involving violence to own a firearm. The justices argued that this law violated an individual's Second Amendment rights and was therefore unconstitutional. They contended that the right to bear arms is not absolute and can be limited in certain circumstances, but they believed this particular restriction went too far because it applied even if someone had served their time and paid their debt to society. Furthermore, they pointed out inconsistencies in how different types of crimes were treated under the law; some non-violent offenses resulted in lifetime bans on gun ownership while violent ones did not necessarily do so.