Divided Supreme Court backs phone location privacy rights in ‘geofence’ warrant case
Divided Supreme Court backs phone location privacy rights in ‘geofence’ warrant case
https://www.ms.now/deadline-white-house/deadline-legal-blog/geofence-ruling-supreme-court-chatrie
Publish Date: 2026-06-29 13:34:00
Source Domain: www.ms.now
The Supreme Court on Monday ruled that law enforcement conducted a Fourth Amendment search when it got a “geofence” warrant for Google location data to help solve an armed robbery. Justice Elena Kagan’s opinion for the court broadly endorsed privacy rights over dissent from Justice Samuel Alito that accused the majority of further destabilizing the law and doing so in a case in which, he said, the defendant will eventually lose.
Geofence warrants are used to locate phones that were in the area of a crime to help law enforcement identify suspects. The legality of such warrants has divided the lower courts and raised concerns for civil liberties, with one privacy group warning the justices ahead of the ruling that “the dragnet fishing expeditions that geofence warrants allow are not restricted to a small pond, but instead sweep in the full ocean of people who carry a cell phone.”
The justices considered the issue in the case of Okello Chatrie, who was convicted of armed robbery in Virginia with evidence from such a warrant.
Chatrie argued that law enforcement illegally invaded his property interest and privacy expectations. The government countered that he chose to share his location data with Google and that he lacked a constitutional interest in protecting it.
To answer the Fourth Amendment question, Kagan noted that the high court needed to decide 1) whether law enforcement technically conducted a “search” when they got Chatrie’s phone data and 2) if it was a search, whether it was a reasonable one.
In Monday’s ruling, the high court only addressed the first question. The answer, it said, was that the police did in fact conduct a search when they got the location information.
“An individual has a reasonable expectation of privacy in records about his cell phone’s location, and police intrude on that constitutionally protected interest when they demand the information — even though for only a limited time, and…
