Supreme Court Says Geofence Searches Trigger Fourth Amendment Protections
Americans have a privacy right in smartphone location data.
Police conduct a Fourth Amendment search when they obtain a person’s smartphone location data through a geofence warrant, the Supreme Court ruled this week in a case overshadowed by immigration decisions.
The decree means police must satisfy the Fourth Amendment before getting information such as a Google location history, and defendants can challenge improperly obtained location evidence in court.
In a 6-3 decision, the high court held individuals have a reasonable expectation of privacy for data their smartphones generate, even when a third-party technology company stores the information. Justice Elena Kagan wrote the majority opinion, which Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Brett Kavanaugh, and Ketanji Brown Jackson joined; Ms. Jackson also filed a concurring opinion, which Ms. Sotomayor joined. Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote an opinion concurring.
The case, Chatrie v. United States, arose from a 2019 armed robbery at a Midlothian, Virginia, credit union. Investigators obtained a geofence warrant directing Google to provide anonymized location history data for devices within a 150-meter radius of the bank around the time of the robbery. Using Google’s three-step disclosure process, police narrowed the results and ultimately identified three users, including Okello Chatrie, who was charged with robbery and firearms offenses.
Mr. Chatrie pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 12 years in prison but retained the right to challenge a district court’s ruling that using the geofencing data was legitimate.
The case now goes back to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals to weigh whether the data search was “reasonable” under the Fourth Amendment.
Ms. Kagan said individuals have a reasonable expectation of privacy for detailed records documenting their physical movements, making police acquisition of Google location history a search subject to Fourth Amendment protections.
The opinion relied heavily on the court’s 2018 Carpenter v. United States decision, which held obtaining historical cell-site location information generally requires a warrant. Ms. Kagan wrote that Google’s history is even more revealing because it records a user’s location approximately every two minutes, can pinpoint a device within about 20 meters, and can estimate elevation to identify the floor of a building where a device is located.
The majority also rejected the government’s argument that only brief periods of tracking fall outside Fourth Amendment protection. Ms. Kagan wrote that such safeguards do not depend on the quantity of information obtained, and even short-term monitoring can reveal sensitive details about a person’s associations and activities.
The court also declined to apply the third-party doctrine, which generally holds that information voluntarily shared with another party loses Fourth Amendment protection. Ms. Kagan wrote that location history is not truly shared in the ordinary sense because modern smartphone users rely on applications and services that routinely collect such information without fully understanding how extensively it is collected or later disclosed to the government.
The ruling did not address whether the good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule would permit use of the evidence even if the warrant were found invalid.
Justice Samuel Alito filed a dissenting opinion, joined in part by Justice Clarence Thomas and in sections by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who also filed a separate dissent.
Mr. Alito argued the majority unnecessarily expanded Fourth Amendment protections and departed from established precedent governing information voluntarily shared with third parties. He warned the decision will create significant uncertainty for courts and investigators by disrupting longstanding search-and-seizure doctrine in the digital age.
Ms. Barrett argued existing Fourth Amendment principles do not support treating the government’s acquisition of those records as a constitutional search.
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