Supreme Court Affirms Privacy Expectations in the Digital Age
On Monday, the Supreme Court determined that law enforcement’s access to historical location data via Google “geofence” warrants constitutes an infringement on an individual’s reasonable expectation of privacy.
In the majority opinion authored by Justice Elena Kagan, the court asserted that tracking a person’s physical movements through commercial location databases constitutes a search under the Fourth Amendment, irrespective of the duration of the data collected or its possession by a third-party technology entity.
Background of the Case
The case, titled Chatrie v. United States, stemmed from a brazen robbery incident on May 20, 2019, involving a credit union in Midlothian, Virginia.
A gunman brandished a firearm, coercing the bank manager to open a safe, and subsequently fleeing with $195,000.
Investigation and Geofence Warrant
Through surveillance footage and witness testimonies, local investigators discerned that the culprit had approached the premises while appearing to converse on a cell phone, yet they were unable to ascertain his identity.
To identify a suspect, law enforcement sought a geofence warrant from a Virginia magistrate on June 14, 2019.
This warrant encompassed a 150-meter virtual radius surrounding the credit union, compelling Google to provide information from its Location History database, which meticulously tracks opted-in users every two minutes via GPS, Wi-Fi, and cellular signals.
Methodology of the Warrant Implementation
The warrant adhered to a three-step methodology designed by Google in collaboration with law enforcement to converge on potential suspects.
The initial step required Google to generate anonymized location data for all mobile devices within the geofence during a one-hour timeframe surrounding the robbery.
In the second step, officers eliminated candidates to nine devices, prompting Google to furnish a comprehensive two-hour chronology of those users’ movements inside and outside the designated area.
Finally, in the third step, the list was further narrowed down to three users, resulting in Google revealing their personal identifying information, such as names and phone numbers.
Charges and Legal Challenges
The extracted data indicated that petitioner Okello Chatrie entered the geofence ten minutes prior to the robbery and proceeded to a nearby residential area immediately post-incident.
Subsequently, a federal grand jury indicted Chatrie on charges of robbery and firearms violations. Chatrie sought to suppress the evidence, contending that the digital dragnet contravened his constitutional rights.
Conflicting Rulings Among Lower Courts
The legal dispute produced divergent findings among lower courts. The federal district court deemed that the geofence warrant clearly violated the Fourth Amendment but permitted the evidence under the good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule.
A divided Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals reaffirmed the conviction on alternative grounds, determining that no search had occurred since Chatrie had voluntarily exposed his data to Google. The full Fourth Circuit subsequently reached a 7-7 deadlock en banc, thereby affirming the conviction.
Supreme Court’s Reversal
The Supreme Court countered the Fourth Circuit’s assertion that no search took place, drawing significant parallels to its 2018 ruling in Carpenter v. United States, which safeguarded extensive cell-site location records.
Justice Kagan dismissed the government’s stance that a mere two-hour tracking period lacked sufficient duration to invoke constitutional protections.
Implications for Privacy
Kagan articulated that smartphones have become “such a pervasive and insistent part of daily life that the proverbial visitor from Mars might conclude they were an important feature of human anatomy.”
Given that Google’s Location History feature can accurately locate a device within 20 meters and assess its elevation within buildings, the court concluded that providing unbridled government access to such data would furnish authorities with a “virtual panopticon” to scrutinize citizens’ activities.
Dismissal of the Third-Party Doctrine
The court also refuted the government’s application of the “third-party doctrine,” which posits that individuals forfeit their privacy expectations concerning information disclosed to businesses.
The majority opined that smartphone users do not genuinely relinquish their location data in a traditional sense.
The judgment underscored that Google frequently compels users to enable Location History, occasionally warning that functionality would be compromised otherwise, without adequately disclosing the precision of such tracking or that the information could be surrendered to law enforcement.
Concurring and Dissenting Opinions
Chief Justice John Roberts, along with Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Brett Kavanaugh, and Ketanji Brown Jackson, aligned with Kagan’s opinion.
Justice Jackson submitted a concurring opinion, endorsed by Sotomayor, contending that the warrant awarded law enforcement excessive unchecked discretion to broaden their inquiry during the second and third steps, devoid of judicial oversight.
Justice Neil Gorsuch concurred with the judgment, articulating that he would have adjudicated the matter by recognizing the location history data as Chatrie’s personal property under conventional property rights rather than employing the expectation-of-privacy paradigm.
Dissenting Views
Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, and Amy Coney Barrett presented dissenting opinions. In his dissent, Alito characterized the majority’s constitutional ruling as an “advisory opinion,” as it did not engage with the lower court’s good-faith ruling, which independently upheld Chatrie’s conviction.
Alito further highlighted that the specific geofence methodology had become largely obsolete due to Google’s alterations in July 2025, which shifted the storage of Location History directly to user devices rather than company servers, thus rendering the company incapable of complying with such warrants.
Future Directions
The Supreme Court refrained from determining the validity of the specific warrant used against Chatrie.
Instead, the justices vacated the Fourth Circuit’s ruling and remanded the case, assigning the task to the lower court to decide whether the multi-step warrant adhered to the Fourth Amendment’s stipulations regarding particularity and probable cause at each juncture of the search.
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