DETROIT, MI — A federal judge has thrown out evidence obtained through searches of certain computers, tablets and smartphones against former University of Michigan football offensive coordinator Matthew Weiss.
U.S. District Court Judge David M. Lawson granted Weiss’ motion to suppress evidence from the search of his devices but denied his motion to suppress information obtained from his iCloud account in a Wednesday, July 1, ruling.
Weiss argued that search warrants obtained by the UM Police Department in Ann Arbor violated the Fourth Amendment’s particularity requirement.
A “warrant that contains no date limitation and no subject-matter limitation is overbroad and violates the Fourth Amendment,” the ruling reads. It later adds that the “lack of particularity in UMPD’s forensic search warrants renders them unconstitutional general warrants.”
The ruling states that three desktop computers, including one in Weiss’ personal office in Schembechler Hall were turned over to UM police. Weiss contended that he was the “exclusive user” of several university-owned devices, including his office computer, work cellphone and iPad, the ruling reads.
“Weiss had a subjective expectation of privacy in the devices that were not extinguished by the University’s computer use policies or by the splash warnings,” the ruling reads.
However, evidence obtained from Weiss’ iCloud data will move forward despite Weiss’ motion.
“The iCloud data that the government seeks to use against Weiss is not the product of an illegal search in the same way as the data stored on his devices,” the ruling reads. “The government’s use of the iCloud data does not run afoul of the Fourth Amendment.”
Weiss’ attorney, David Benowitz, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A UM Division of Public Safety and Security spokesperson redirected MLive/The Ann Arbor News to a spokesperson with the U.S. Attorney’s Office, who declined to comment.
Weiss, 43, was the co-offensive coordinator for head coach Jim Harbaugh in 2022. He was indicted in March 2025 on allegations he gained illegal access to personal information for more than 150,000 student-athletes and used it to hack social media, email and cloud storage accounts belonging to more than 3,000 student-athletes, many of whom are women.
The alleged hacking was done allegedly in an effort to gain “private photographs and videos never intended to be shared beyond intimate partners,” federal officials previously said.
If convicted, Weiss faces up to five years on each computer charge and two years on each identity theft charge.
U.S. District Court Judge Nancy G. Edmunds denied a motion last December to dismiss Weiss’ alleged identity theft charges.
Also last December, investigators revealed a dozen photos of Weiss in what they believe came from one of his attempts to hack and steal thousands of sexually explicit photos and videos of college students. The scheme lasted from 2015 to 2023.
Read more: Former Michigan football assistant still facing identity theft charges
Weiss was fired by Michigan in January 2023, after spending the previous two seasons on Jim Harbaugh’s staff as an assistant. He arrived in Ann Arbor in 2021 to serve as quarterbacks coach and then was promoted to co-offensive coordinator in 2022.
His alleged crimes also date back to his time with the Baltimore Ravens in the NFL, where he coached for more than a decade prior to arriving at Michigan.
Weiss has also been hit with more than a dozen civil lawsuits from former student-athletes ― all of them women ― seeking monetary damages.
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