Justice Elena Kagan authored the majority opinion in a landmark US Supreme Court ruling that geofence warrants—which compel tech companies to hand over smartphone location data from all devices within a virtual perimeter—must comply with Fourth Amendment privacy protections. The decision bolsters critics who view these sweeping warrants as an unconstitutional dragnet.
Case Background: The Chatrie Case
The case, United States v. Chatrie, originated from a 2019 bank robbery in Richmond, Virginia, where the suspect fled with $195,000. Local police used a geofence warrant to identify Okello Chatrie, who had opted into Google's optional “location history” feature that recorded his location every few minutes. Chatrie pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 12 years in prison, but his lawyers argued the warrant violated his Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable search and seizure.
Law enforcement argued that geofence warrants are essential for finding suspects and witnesses when other leads dry up. The US government contended that individuals cannot have a “reasonable expectation of privacy” when in public and when they have voluntarily allowed a third party like Google to collect their location data.
Privacy Concerns and Scope
Privacy advocates have long criticized geofence warrants for their breadth, which can cover large areas and timeframes without targeting specific individuals. “If the government doesn’t need to … link something to a crime, it could monitor a protest or an abortion clinic or a gun range or a church or an AA meeting or a doctor’s office,” said Matthew Tokson, a law professor at the University of Utah.
The government noted that only about one-third of active Google account holders—more than 500 million users, according to Chatrie’s lawyers—opted into location history. Google itself acknowledged in legal filings that geofence searches “often run a high risk of sweeping in innocent users–sometimes thousands of them,” covering private homes, government buildings, places of worship, and other locations without probable cause.
Impact and Precedent
This ruling is the first time the Supreme Court has addressed the Fourth Amendment’s scope regarding digital data since a 2018 decision that required a warrant for cellphone location tracking. The decision sets a precedent that geofence warrants, which are widely used by police and the FBI, must meet constitutional privacy standards.
