The U.S. Supreme Court has issued a landmark decision holding that law enforcement's use of geofence warrants to obtain cell phone location data constitutes a search under the Fourth Amendment, marking a significant development in constitutional privacy protections in the digital age.
In a 6-3 ruling released Monday, the justices concluded that broad searches of location data collected by technology companies are subject to the Fourth Amendment's warrant requirements. While the court did not determine whether the specific search at issue was constitutional, it sent the case back to the lower court to decide whether the warrant used by investigators was reasonable.
The case stemmed from the investigation of a 2019 armed bank robbery in Midlothian, Virginia. Investigators obtained a geofence warrant directing Google to search through the location histories of hundreds of millions of users to identify devices that had been near the bank during the robbery. After narrowing the results to 19 devices, police requested additional identifying information for three of those users without obtaining a second warrant, ultimately leading to the arrest and conviction of Okello Chatrie.
Chatrie challenged the evidence, arguing that the sweeping search violated the Fourth Amendment by authorizing an indiscriminate search of innocent users' data without individualized probable cause. A federal district court agreed that the warrant lacked sufficient particularity and found that the later requests for identifying information also violated constitutional protections. Nevertheless, the court allowed the evidence under the good-faith exception, concluding that investigators reasonably relied on the warrant that had been issued.
The Supreme Court agreed that geofence searches implicate the Fourth Amendment because they allow the government to access detailed records of individuals' movements. The majority emphasized that constitutional protections must continue to apply as technology evolves and that digital surveillance cannot circumvent longstanding privacy principles.
Rather than deciding whether the warrant used in Chatrie's case ultimately satisfied constitutional standards, the justices instructed the lower court to determine whether the search was reasonable under the Fourth Amendment.
The ruling comes after years of rapid growth in law enforcement's use of geofence warrants. Google received its first such request in 2016, and by 2020 was processing more than 11,000 geofence demands from investigators. The company has since redesigned its location history system so that much of the data is stored directly on users' devices instead of Google's servers, making broad geofence searches significantly more difficult.
Privacy advocates welcomed the decision, viewing it as an important safeguard against expansive government access to personal digital information. Organizations supporting Chatrie argued that constitutional protections must extend to emerging technologies and warned that similar reverse-search techniques involving data held by other companies could present future privacy concerns.
The decision also arrives amid conflicting rulings from lower courts. In 2024, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit concluded that geofence warrants resemble the general warrants the Fourth Amendment was designed to prohibit, although it likewise permitted evidence in that case under the good-faith exception.
Texas courts have taken a narrower approach. Last year, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals upheld a geofence warrant after finding it was sufficiently tailored to minimize unnecessary intrusions on individuals who were not reasonably suspected of involvement in the crime.
The Supreme Court's decision may also influence future disputes involving other forms of location-tracking technology, including automatic license plate reader (ALPR) systems. However, courts have generally distinguished vehicle location records from cell phone location data. Earlier this year, the Fifth Circuit ruled that use of ALPR information in one criminal investigation did not amount to a Fourth Amendment search, while leaving open the possibility that far more extensive or long-term vehicle tracking could raise constitutional concerns.
Three justices dissented from the Supreme Court's ruling. Justice Samuel Alito warned that the majority's decision would significantly reshape Fourth Amendment jurisprudence despite having little practical effect on Chatrie's conviction. Justice Amy Coney Barrett separately argued that users do not maintain a reasonable expectation of privacy in location information voluntarily shared with Google while moving through public spaces.
