SCOTUS Rules 6-3 on 'Geofence' Warrants

Smartphones just got a stronger shield from the nation's highest court. In a 6–3 ruling Monday, the Supreme Court said police generally must get a warrant before obtaining detailed location records from a person's phone. They found that a request for a robbery suspect's Google location history under the "geofencing" technique counted as a search, meaning the Fourth Amendment's ban on unreasonable searches and seizures may have been violated, NPR News reports.

• "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," Justice Elena Kagan wrote for the majority.
• In a dissenting opinion joined in part by Justices Clarence Thomas and Amy Coney Barrett, Justice Samuel Alito said the ruling "will send seismic waves through our Fourth Amendment doctrine," per SCOTUSblog.

The justices, however, sidestepped the broader issue at the heart of the case: whether sweeping geofence warrants—which scoop up data on every device in a defined area at a set time—are constitutional at all, the Washington Post reports. That question was kicked back to a lower court. The case stems from a 2019 Virginia bank robbery in which police used a geofence warrant to identify suspect Okello Chatrie from among 19 Google users near the scene. During arguments in April, tech firms including Google, Microsoft, and X warned the court that these warrants can expose the movements of hundreds or thousands of uninvolved people, potentially revealing visits to churches, clinics, or political groups.

Law enforcement groups countered that the tools provide only a brief snapshot and are vital for solving crimes. The ruling makes clear that a judge's approval is now the floor for accessing such data; whether some warrants go too far remains unresolved. After his arrest, Chatrie's lawyers argued that the search was the "digital equivalent of searching every home in the neighborhood of a reported burglary, or searching the bags of every person walking along Broadway because of a theft in Times Square." He ended up pleading guilty to bank robbery and is serving a 12-year sentence.