The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Monday that law enforcement officers conduct a Fourth Amendment search when they obtain cell phone users' precise Location History data from Google using a geofence warrant.
In a 6-3 decision in Chatrie v. United States, the Court held that Americans have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their cell phone location information, even when that data is stored by a third-party technology company such as Google.
The ruling represents one of the Court's most significant digital privacy decisions since its 2018 Carpenter decision involving historical cell-site location data.
Justice Elena Kagan authored the majority opinion, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Brett Kavanaugh, Ketanji Brown Jackson, and Jackson separately concurring.
Justice Neil Gorsuch concurred only in the judgment, while Justice Samuel Alito dissented, joined in part by Justices Clarence Thomas and Amy Coney Barrett.
The case, which builds directly on the landmark Carpenter v. United States (2018) decision, required warrants for cell-site location information (CSLI).
The Court made clear that Google's even more precise and sweeping Location History data, which logs a user's location every two minutes or so, within about 20 meters, and can reveal elevation and which floor of a building someone is on, deserves at least the same protection.
The case arose from a May 20, 2019, armed robbery of a credit union in Midlothian, Virginia, where police had surveillance footage and witness statements but no suspect.
On June 14, they obtained a Virginia magistrate's geofence warrant directed at Google, which targeted a 150-meter radius around the credit union.
The warrant used Google's three-step process, which involved handing over anonymized location data, narrowing the list, and then providing more anonymized data for a longer two-hour window.
Google ultimately produced three users' identifying information, including that of petitioner Okello Chatrie, whose data showed him entering the geofence area about ten minutes before the robbery and heading toward a residential area right after.
Chatrie was later charged federally with robbery and firearms offenses, and he moved to suppress the Google data, arguing the geofence warrant violated the Fourth Amendment.
The district court agreed the warrant "plainly violates" the Fourth Amendment but denied suppression under the good-faith exception.
The Supreme Court granted certiorari only on the search question and left the warrant's validity for the Fourth Circuit to decide on remand.
The Court systematically rejected the government's arguments, stating that Location History is more revealing than CSLI, and even short-term monitoring can reveal a "wealth of detail" about a person's life.
The third-party doctrine does not save the government, as users do not expect Google to hand over their Location History data to police on demand.
