{"id":283695,"date":"2026-06-29T13:34:00","date_gmt":"2026-06-29T17:34:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/06\/29\/divided-supreme-court-backs-phone-location-privacy-rights-in-geofence-warrant-case\/"},"modified":"2026-06-29T13:45:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-29T17:45:09","slug":"divided-supreme-court-backs-phone-location-privacy-rights-in-geofence-warrant-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/06\/29\/divided-supreme-court-backs-phone-location-privacy-rights-in-geofence-warrant-case\/","title":{"rendered":"Divided Supreme Court backs phone location privacy rights in \u2018geofence\u2019 warrant case"},"content":{"rendered":"

Divided Supreme Court backs phone location privacy rights in \u2018geofence\u2019 warrant case<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.ms.now\/deadline-white-house\/deadline-legal-blog\/geofence-ruling-supreme-court-chatrie<\/a><\/p>\n

Publish Date: 2026-06-29 13:34:00<\/a><\/p>\n

Source Domain: www.ms.now<\/a><\/p>\n

The Supreme Court on Monday ruled that law enforcement conducted a Fourth Amendment search when it got a \u201cgeofence\u201d warrant for Google location data to help solve an armed robbery. Justice Elena Kagan\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

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 \u201cthe 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

Chatrie\u00a0argued that\u00a0law enforcement illegally invaded his property interest and privacy expectations. The government\u00a0countered that\u00a0he chose to share his location data with Google and that he lacked a constitutional interest in protecting it.<\/p>\n

To answer the Fourth Amendment question, Kagan noted that the high court needed to decide 1) whether law enforcement technically conducted a \u201csearch\u201d when they got Chatrie\u2019s phone data and 2) if it was a search, whether it was a reasonable one. <\/p>\n

In Monday\u2019s 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. <\/p>\n

\u201cAn individual has a reasonable expectation of privacy in records about his cell phone\u2019s location, and police intrude on that constitutionally protected interest when they demand the information \u2014 even though for only a limited time, and…<\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Divided Supreme Court backs phone location privacy rights in \u2018geofence\u2019 warrant case https:\/\/www.ms.now\/deadline-white-house\/deadline-legal-blog\/geofence-ruling-supreme-court-chatrie Publish Date:…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":283696,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.ms.now\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/260603-scotus-decision-search-warrant-police-pi.webp?w=1200&h=630&crop=1","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-283695","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-privacy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283695"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=283695"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283695\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":283697,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283695\/revisions\/283697"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/283696"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=283695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=283695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=283695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}