Supreme Court: Police Need a Warrant for Your Location Data

What Is a Geofence Warrant?

A geofence warrant does not name a suspect. It names a location and a time window, then orders tech companies to hand over data on every phone present within a defined radius during that period. In the case that reached the Supreme Court, police investigating a 2019 Virginia bank robbery asked Google for anonymized location data on every device within 150 meters during a one hour window — then worked backward to identify suspects from whoever was in the area.

The standard process unfolds in three steps:

1. Google provides anonymized identifiers for all devices in the target area
2. Police expand the time window and refine the radius to narrow the list
3. Google discloses full identities — names, phone numbers, account details — for the remaining suspects

Law enforcement has issued these warrants tens of thousands of times in recent years. Protests, courthouses, hospitals, newsrooms, and places of worship have all been the subject of geofence sweeps — capturing the data of journalists, lawyers, activists, and ordinary bystanders who had no connection to any crime.

What Did the Court Decide?

Writing for the 6-3 majority, Justice Elena Kagan held that "an individual has a reasonable expectation of privacy in records about their cell phone's location," and that government access to that data through a third party like Google constitutes a Fourth Amendment search. Police must now establish probable cause before a judge — the same standard required to search a home — before issuing a geofence warrant.

The ruling directly confronts the "third party doctrine" — a longstanding legal rule holding that you forfeit privacy rights in information you share with companies. The government argued that by enabling location history in Google Maps, users voluntarily hand over that data and cannot later claim a privacy interest in it. The Court rejected that argument.

Kagan drew on the 2018 precedent in Carpenter v. United States — which required warrants for cell tower location data — but went further. Unlike passive carrier data that users never interact with, location history is something people actively rely on: for navigation, fitness tracking, travel logs. Kagan compared it to emails or photos stored on company servers: intimate, personal, and deserving constitutional protection.

Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, and Amy Coney Barrett dissented, arguing the third party doctrine should remain intact because users consciously enable location tracking.

Why This Matters for Journalists and Activists

Location data is not neutral. It reveals which protests you attended, which sources you met, which border crossings you used, and which law firms or medical offices you visited. Geofence sweeps around demonstrations and newsrooms have previously ensnared reporters covering civil unrest — their movements entered law enforcement databases without any individual suspicion.

The EFF's Andrew Crocker, who has tracked geofence litigation for years, welcomed the ruling as a reaffirmation that "you have an expectation of privacy in location data," but warned the warrants still create "dragnets that violate the privacy of innocent bystanders." The ruling raises the bar; it does not eliminate the risk. A properly issued geofence warrant, supported by probable cause, remains available to law enforcement.

The ACLU's Brett Kaufman called it "critical protection against invasive and overbroad government searches." For journalists whose sources depend on physical meetings remaining confidential, and for activists whose travel patterns could expose their networks, the ruling removes one tool from the surveillance playbook — and reestablishes that the Constitution follows you into the digital world.

What Changes — and What Doesn't

For law enforcement, geofence warrants are not banned. Police can still obtain them — but must now demonstrate probable cause, describe the specific area and time window with particularity, and obtain judicial approval. Blanket dragnets without individualized suspicion are no longer constitutional.

For ordinary users, a practical shift is already partly in place. Google announced in 2023 that it would store location history on users' devices rather than company servers by default, limiting what any warrant — valid or not — can compel the company to produce. The Supreme Court ruling cements constitutional protection around whatever data remains accessible.

The Fourth Amendment, however, only constrains government action. Private companies remain free to collect, share, and sell your location data to advertisers, data brokers, and hedge funds without any warrant requirement. State laws in California, Texas, and a handful of others impose some limits on commercial location tracking, but no federal statute comprehensively restricts it. The ruling is a floor against government surveillance — not a ceiling on corporate data collection.

What Happens Next

The Supreme Court remanded the Chatrie case to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, which must now determine whether the evidence gathered via the original warrantless geofence request should be suppressed — and whether Okello Chatrie's bank robbery conviction can survive.

For the broader legal landscape, lower courts will need to determine what "probable cause" and "particularity" mean in the context of geofence requests — how narrow a time window is narrow enough, how small a radius is specific enough. Those details will be litigated case by case in the months ahead.

Privacy advocates are already calling for Congress to go further — passing comprehensive federal legislation restricting commercial location data collection, not just government access. Until then, the ruling is a meaningful protection in one direction, while the commercial surveillance ecosystem that feeds the same data to private buyers remains largely unaddressed. You can read about how government email surveillance continues even after legal changes for another dimension of the same problem.