The Supreme Court ruled on Monday that when police use a so-called geofence warrant to scoop up cellphone location data in pursuit of a suspect, that action counts as a search under the Fourth Amendment. The practical upshot: law enforcement will now need to obtain a warrant before tapping into such location databases in the future.

A Cross-Ideological Majority

Justice Elena Kagan authored the opinion for a majority that brought together both conservative and liberal justices. The court split 6-3, with three of its conservatives landing in dissent.

The case arrived at a moment when Americans entrust enormous amounts of personal information to servers run by private companies, raising difficult questions about how easily police can reach into that trove. Rather than issue a sweeping ruling, the court charted a relatively narrow course, settling on a requirement that police secure a warrant when requesting location information from a geolocation database.

Kagan framed the decision in terms of enduring constitutional principle, writing that the Fourth Amendment must continue to guard against unjustified government intrusion into individual privacy.

How the Case Reached the Court

At the heart of the dispute is Okello Chatrie, a Virginia man who appealed to the Supreme Court after police used the geofence technique to identify him as a suspect in a 2019 bank robbery.

When the investigation stalled, police served Google with a geofence warrant seeking the handful of people whose phones placed them within 300 meters of the bank at the time of the crime. Chatrie later entered a conditional guilty plea, preserving his right to challenge the broad warrant on appeal.

Notably, the Supreme Court did not actually resolve Chatrie’s case. Because the police in his situation had in fact obtained a warrant, the majority limited itself to concluding that a warrant was required, then handed the matter back to the lower courts to determine whether the search itself complied with the Fourth Amendment.

A Sharp Dissent

Justice Samuel Alito did not hold back in his disagreement, branding the court’s opinion an irresponsible escapade.

He argued that although the decision would send seismic waves through Fourth Amendment doctrine, none of it would change the outcome of Chatrie’s own case, a fact he said the court knew and did not dispute. By declining to review the one question that might have offered Chatrie any hope of relief, Alito charged, the majority had set the stage to strike a pose as a great champion of privacy in the digital age.

The Particularity Problem

The Fourth Amendment requires more than just a warrant; it demands that warrants be particularized, meaning specific enough that they don’t amount to a fishing expedition. Chatrie’s attorneys argued the warrant failed that test, partly because it forced Google to comb through location data belonging to millions of people just to isolate the small group near the bank when the robbery occurred.

His lawyers warned that the potential for abuse was breathtaking. They cautioned that the government could simply draw a geofence around a church, a political rally, or a gun shop and compel a search of every user’s records to discover who had been present.

The Crime and the Investigation

According to police, Chatrie passed a note to a bank teller in 2019 demanding all the cash, insisting on at least $100,000 and threatening that nobody would get hurt and the teller’s family would be safe if the demand was met.

After identifying him, authorities executed federal search warrants and reported finding robbery-style demand notes in his bedroom, nearly $100,000 in cash, and a 9mm pistol. Police say Chatrie confessed to the robbery and was ultimately sentenced to more than 11 years in prison.

The Lower Court and the Government’s Argument

The Richmond-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had ruled against Chatrie, holding that the warrant did not constitute a search for Fourth Amendment purposes. Its reasoning leaned on the idea that people generally hand over their data to tech companies voluntarily, a point the Justice Department emphasized heavily in defending the warrants.

U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer told the justices that Chatrie had taken no steps to shield his location from disclosure, such as pausing the Location History feature he had turned on or adjusting, deactivating, or leaving behind his phone during the crime. The data at issue, notably, can pinpoint a person’s location within three meters every two minutes.

Leaning on Precedent

Chatrie’s attorneys countered that the voluntary-disclosure logic broke down in his case, pointing to a 2018 Supreme Court precedent. In Carpenter v. U.S., a divided court ruled that law enforcement generally must establish probable cause before accessing cellphone tower data to trace a suspect’s movements. If a warrant is required for tower data, his lawyers reasoned, then surely one is needed for information that is far more precise and reliable.

What Comes Next

The ruling leaves Chatrie’s ultimate fate to the lower courts while reshaping the broader legal landscape around digital privacy. Google, which had received the bulk of these warrants, has already changed its policy to alter how the relevant data is stored. As technology continues to track people’s movements with ever-greater precision, the decision stakes out a clear principle: reaching into those digital records now requires the protection of a warrant.