Today, in a 6 to 3 opinion written by Justice Kagan, the Supreme Court held that police officers conducted a Fourth Amendment search when they acquired petitioner Chatrie’s location data from Google because an individual has a reasonable expectation of privacy in his cell-phone location information. Chatrie v. United States, No. 25-112 (June 29, 2026). In so holding, the Court reaffirmed what it said in Caprenter -- the Fourth Amendment protects individuals’ reasonable expectations of privacy, and governmental “intrusion into that private sphere generally qualifies as a search.” Everything Carpenter relied on to find that law enforcement officers conducted a Fourth Amendment search when they accessed cell site location information applies as well or better to the police’s accessing of Location History data. What’s more, the Court rejected the government’s argument that accessing only a short amount of cell-phone location information does not count as a search, and its argument that the so-called third-party doctrine precluded Chatrie from invoking the Fourth Amendment’s protections.
Petitioner Okello Chatrie entered a conditional plea in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia to one count of armed robbery of a credit union and one count of brandishing a firearm during and in relation to a crime of violence, reserving his right to appeal the denial of his motion to suppress. Petitioner moved to suppress the fruits of a geofence warrant to Google. A geofence warrant is a reverse search warrant that compels companies, like Google, to identify all mobile devices within a specific geographic area during a set timeframe. Unlike traditional warrants that target a known suspect, this investigative tool works backward to identify potential suspects from a list of all devices—and innocent bystanders—present at a crime scene. The district court concluded that the geofence warrant violated the Fourth Amendment but declined to suppress the evidence through the good faith exception. Petitioner was sentenced to 141 months of imprisonment. A divided Fourth Circuit affirmed on different grounds, holding that no search occurred because petitioner voluntarily exposed his information to Google. The Fourth Circuit reheard the case en banc and, in a tie vote, affirmed in a one-sentence per curiam opinion.
Justice Kagan delivered the opinion of the Court, joined by Chief Justice Roberts, and Justices Sotomayor, Kavanaugh, and Jackson, which summarized the facts and holding as follows:
The geofence warrant at issue here was directed to Google, and used to solve a bank robbery. Hundreds of millions of Google users have activated a service called Location History, which records the location of a user’s cell phone every two minutes or so. Through a geofence warrant, police officers required Google to turn over Location History data revealing cell phones within the vicinity of a bank at around the time it was robbed. At the end of the multi-step process described in the warrant, Google gave the police three names. The Federal Government soon charged one of the individuals thus identified, petitioner Okello Chatrie, with committing the crime.
Today, we consider how the Fourth Amendment applies to that use of a geofence warrant. Answering that question in full would mean deciding whether the police conducted a Fourth Amendment “search” when they acquired the cellphone data leading to Chatrie’s arrest and, if so, whether that search was reasonable given the features of the warrant they employed. We decide the first part of that inquiry today, concluding that the police conducted a search when they gained access to Location History data. An individual has a reasonable expectation of privacy in records about his cell phone’s location, and police intrude on that constitutionally protected interest when they demand the information—even though for only a limited time, and from a third-party tech company. We leave to the Court of Appeals the further question whether, given the warrant issued, the search here was reasonable, meaning that each of its steps was properly described with particularity and found to be supported by probable cause.
Justice Jackson filed a concurring opinion, joined by Justice Sotomayor. Justice Gorsuch filed an opinion concurring in the judgment. Justice Alito dissented, joined by Justice Thomas as to Part 1, and in which Justice Barrett joined joined as to Parts II-B, II-C-2. Briefing on the merits is available on the Supreme Court's website here.
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