In Chatrie v. United States, No. 25-112 (Jun. 29, 2026), the U.S. Supreme Court held that Geofence Warrants constitute a “search” under the Fourth Amendment. They acquire people’s location data from Google by linking to their cell-phone location information.
WHAT ARE “GEOFENCE WARRANTS?”
Geofence warrants are an investigative tool typically employed when law enforcement knows the approximate time and location of a crime but not the identities of suspects. In executing a geofence warrant, law enforcement compels a company to provide certain information indicating which particular smartphones were present within a geographic area during a specified time frame. Law enforcement can then use the information to potentially identify the owner of a smartphone found in the area of interest during the time frame. Because geofence warrants do not begin with an identifiable suspect, they have been said to “‘work in reverse” from traditional search warrants.
FACTUAL BACKGROUND
On May 20, 2019, a man robbed a credit union in Virginia. Local police officers learned from witness interviews and surveillance footage that the robber had approached the credit union from a corner of an adjacent church while appearing to talk on a cell phone, but they could not find out anything more, and the robber remained at large. On June 14, the police officers applied to a Virginia magistrate for a Geofence Warrant directed to Google.
Here, the Geofence Warrant would require Google to hand over data about the cell phones located within a 150-meter radius of the credit union—the so-called “geofence”—near the time of the crime.
The federal magistrate judge granted and issued the warrant. Through this process, Google ultimately produced three cell-phone users’ identifying information, including the Defendant Mr. Chatrie. His location data showed that he entered the geofence about ten minutes before the robbery and headed toward a residential area immediately after leaving the bank.
Following further police work, a federal grand jury charged Chatrie with robbery and related firearms offenses. He moved to suppress the information the police obtained from Google. According to Chatrie, the officers had acquired that data through a Fourth Amendment search, and the warrant ostensibly authorizing that search was invalid.
The Fourth Circuit found that the Geofence Warrant “plainly violates the rights enshrined in the Fourth] Amendment. However, it denied the motion based on the good-faith exception to the Exclusionary Rule. A divided panel of the Fourth Circuit affirmed on different reasoning, holding that no search occurred because Chatrie did not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in two hours’ worth of Location History data voluntarily exposed to Google. Eventually, the U.S. Supreme Court decided to hear the case solely on the question whether the police violated the Fourth Amendment in obtaining Chatrie’s location data.
COURT’S ANALYSIS & CONCLUSIONS
Justice Kagan delivered the opinion of the Court. He stated that police officers conducted a Fourth Amendment search when they acquired Chatrie’s location data from Google because an individual has a reasonable expectation of privacy in his cell-phone location information. Justice Kagan based his reasoing in Carpenter v. United States, which held that accessing cell-site location information (CSLI) constitutes a Fourth Amendment search. In Carpenter, the Court reasoned that CSLI provides a “detailed” and “encyclopedic” portrait of a person’s whereabouts, and, with that, an intimate window into a person’s life. Because people compulsively carry their cell phones all the time, the Carpenter Court explained, a cell phone tracks nearly exactly the movements of its owner, and thus faithfully follows him not only through public thoroughfares but into private residences, doctor’s offices, political headquarters, and other potentially revealing locales. The Carpenter Court further observed that the newfound tracking capacity that CSLI gives the police runs against everyone —not just those under investigation—and travels back in time, making possible a form of surveillance that would have been unknown prior to the digital age.
“Most cell-phone users have no awareness of CSLI records, and would never try to retrieve them; by contrast, Google users regularly employ Location History as a personal journal. In that way, Location History resembles other private materials – e.g., emails, documents, photographs, or calendars – that even if stored on Google’s servers, a user reasonably views as his own and expects to be shielded from the inquisitive eyes of the government.” ~Justice Kagan, U.S. Supreme Court
Against that background, Justice Kagan rejected the Government’s argument that accessing only a short amount of cell-phone location information does not count as a Fourth Amendment search fails. “Even short-term monitoring can provide a wealth of detail about a person’s familial, political, professional, religious, and sexual associations,” said Justice Kagan.
Next, Justice Kagan rejected the Government arguement that the so-called third-party doctrine precludes Chatrie from invoking the Fourth Amendment’s protections. The Government’s idea is that in authorizing Google to collect, retain, and use his location information, Chatrie lost his legitimate expectation of privacy, and therefore his right to complain of a search. However, Justice Kagan emphasized that Carpenter refused to apply the third-party doctrine to CSLI, and no good reason exists to reach a different result for Location History:
“The exposure of that information to Google is merely what happens when a user avails himself of one of the services on his cell phone. The Government’s argument that generating Location History, unlike producing CSLI, is a voluntary choice is meritless.” ~Justice Kagan, U.S. Supreme Court
With that, Justice Kagan remanded the case back to the Federal Court of Appeals to decide whether, at each step of the search process, the Geofence Warrant satisfied the Fourth Amendment’s requirements of particularity and probable cause.
Please contact my office if you, a friend or family member are charged with a crime involving Search & Seizure. Hiring an effective and competent defense attorney is the first and best step toward justice.
