On June 29, 2026, the Supreme Court held 6–3 in Chatrie v. United States (No. 25-112) that law enforcement’s acquisition of Google Location History through a geofence warrant constitutes a Fourth Amendment “search.” Importantly, however, the Court did not hold that geofence warrants are categorically unconstitutional. Instead, after concluding that the Government conducted a Fourth Amendment search, the Court vacated the Fourth Circuit’s judgment and remanded for further proceedings to determine whether the particular warrant satisfied the Fourth Amendment’s requirements.

Petitioner Okello Chatrie was convicted of robbing a credit union based, in part, on evidence obtained through a three-step judicial geofence warrant directed to Google. At step one, Google produced anonymized information identifying all mobile devices located within 150 meters of the credit union during the hour surrounding the robbery. At the second step, Google produced expanded location-history information for a subset of those devices over a longer period. At the third step, Google disclosed subscriber information identifying several account holders, including Chatrie. Investigators later obtained a separate warrant to search Chatrie’s residence, where they recovered the stolen cash, a firearm, and robbery demand notes.

Chatrie moved to suppress the evidence, arguing that the geofence warrant violated the Fourth Amendment. The district court agreed that the warrant was unconstitutional but declined to suppress the evidence under the good faith exception to the exclusionary rule. Chatrie entered a conditional guilty plea preserving his right to appeal. A divided Fourth Circuit ultimately affirmed following rehearing en banc.

Justice Kagan, writing for the majority and joined by Chief Justice Roberts, and Justices Sotomayor, Kavanaugh, and Jackson, began by explaining why Google Local History differs from traditional business records. Unlike conventional records maintained for commercial purposes, Google Location History can reveal an extraordinarily detailed picture of an individual’s movements through both public and private spaces with remarkable precision. That technological reality framed the Court’s Fourth Amendment analysis.

Justice Kagan next explained why geofence warrants raise unique constitutional concerns. Unlike a traditional warrant, which begins with a known suspect, a geofence warrant begins with a place and time and requires a technology company to identify everyone whose device happened to be present. The government effectively works backward from a digital database to identify potential suspects, sweeping within the search numerous individuals who are entirely unconnected to the suspected crime.

Thus, the Court held that obtaining Google Location History through a geofence warrant constitutes a Fourth Amendment search. Relying on its landmark 2018 decision in Carpenter v. United States that the government must obtain a search warrant based on probable cause to access historical cell-site location information, the Court concluded here that individuals retain a reasonable expectation of privacy in highly detailed historical location information even when the information is held by a third-party service provider. The Court rejected the Government’s argument that Location History should be treated as an ordinary business record voluntarily disclosed to Google.

The Court similarly rejected the argument that the relatively short duration of the requested data removed the warrant from Fourth Amendment scrutiny. The Court explained that the constitutional significance of the search turned less on the length of the surveillance than on the precision and revealing nature of the location information obtained. Even a relatively brief window of highly accurate location data may expose intimate details about an individual’s movements and associations.

The Court also declined to extend the traditional third-party doctrine to Google Location History. Rejecting what it described as the government’s “app-by-app, feature-by-feature” approach to Fourth Amendment protection, the Court explained that  modern cell-phone users routinely interact with digital services requiring affirmative user actions. Those interactions, standing alone, do not eliminate a reasonable expectation of privacy in the resulting location information.

Equally important is what the Court did not decide. After determining that the government conducted a Fourth Amendment search, the Court expressly declined to decide whether this particular geofence warrant was constitutionally reasonable. Because the Fourth Circuit had not fully analyzed probable cause, particularity, or the constitutionality of the warrant’s three-step disclosure process, the Court vacated the court of appeals’ decision and remanded for further proceedings.

Justice Jackson, joined by Justice Sotomayor, concurred that the government conducted a search but expressed concern that later stages of the warrant afforded law enforcement too much discretion with insufficient judicial oversight. Justice Gorsuch concurred in the judgment, agreeing that the Fourth Amendment applied, but concluding that the case should have been resolved under a property-based understanding of the Fourth Amendment, treating the location information as part of Chatrie’s protected “effects.”

Justice Alito, joined in part by Justice Thomas and Barrett, dissented. In addition to questioning the Court’s decision to grant review despite the likely applicability of the good-faith exception, Justice Alito argued that the majority improperly extended Carpenter beyond its facts and warned that the decision would generate significant uncertainty for courts evaluating emerging investigative technologies. Justice Barrett filed a separate dissent, concluding that Chatrie lacked a reasonable expectation of privacy in location information that he voluntarily enabled and shared.

Takeaways

Chatrie does not eliminate geofence warrants, but it limits how such warrants may be used. The Government may still seek location data in appropriate cases, but it must treat that request as a Fourth Amendment search, which means that future geofence warrants will need to be narrowly drawn and subject to meaningful judicial review.

For more information, please contact Chantel Febus, James Azadian, Ryan VanOver, or David Ter-Petrosyan.

A special thanks to Summer Associate Nareh Aghakhanian for assisting with this alert.