JUNE 30, 2026
Supreme Court rules cellphone location data obtained via geofence warrants carries constitutional privacy protections
The Supreme Court ruled Monday that constitutional privacy protections extend to cellphone location information, deciding in the case of Okello Chatrie, whose identity was uncovered through a geofence warrant after a 2019 bank robbery in Midlothian, Virginia. The court voted 6-3, with Justice Elena Kagan writing for the majority and Justice Samuel Alito in dissent. The court did not resolve whether the specific search of Chatrie's data was constitutional, instead sending the case back to a lower court for further proceedings.
The ruling stems from a May 2019 bank robbery at the Call Federal Credit Union near Richmond, Virginia. Police obtained a geofence warrant requiring Google to search location history for every device near the bank at the time of the robbery, identifying 19 devices, narrowing focus to nine, and ultimately de-anonymizing three users — one of whom was Chatrie. A subsequent search warrant for his home turned up nearly $100,000 in cash, including bills wrapped in bands signed by the bank teller. Chatrie pleaded guilty and was sentenced to nearly 12 years in prison.
Writing for the majority, Justice Kagan stated that "a cellphone user is not to be viewed as sharing private information with third parties — which then can be freely passed on to the government — just by doing the ordinary things cellphone users do." The ruling extends the logic of Carpenter v. United States (2018), in which the court carved a narrow exception to the third-party doctrine for long-term cell-site location data. Justice Alito, in dissent, argued that Chatrie had no expectation of privacy in information he voluntarily provided to Google.
The decision leaves unresolved the broader question of whether the specific geofence search in Chatrie's case satisfied Fourth Amendment requirements. A federal district judge had found a violation but permitted the evidence under the good-faith exception; the Fourth Circuit upheld the conviction in a fractured ruling. A separate appeals court in New Orleans had reached the opposite conclusion, finding geofence warrants categorically prohibited as general warrants.