A protester holds up an iPhone that reads, "No Entry" outside of the the Apple store on 5th Avenue on Feb. 23, 2016, in New York City. | Getty Federal judge: Apple doesn't have to unlock iPhone in N.Y. case The ruling is likely to bolster Apple's resistance.

A federal magistrate in Brooklyn, New York, has denied the government’s application to force Apple to help law enforcement gain access to an iPhone belonging to a man who pled guilty in a meth conspiracy.

The ruling is likely to bolster Apple’s resistance in California to a separate FBI request that the company help investigators circumvent security features on an iPhone used by one of the terrorists in the San Bernardino shootings.


In the New York case, U.S. Magistrate Judge James Orenstein rejected federal prosecutors’ claim that a 1789 law authorizes the government to obtain a court order seeking to bypass a passcode-lock on an Apple phone.

“Nothing in the government's arguments suggests any principled limit on how far a court may go in requiring a person or company to violate the most deeply-rooted values to provide assistance to the government the court deems necessary,” Orenstein wrote.

Apple originally cooperated with prosecutors in the Brooklyn case, but reversed course after Orenstein asked the company’s lawyers to weigh in with a formal legal position.