Privacy advocates have a real reason to celebrate after the recent US Supreme Court decision. This ruling stated that police need to meet strict constitutional requirements before they can get your phone’s location history.
In the 6-3 Chatrie v. United States ruling, the court set new rules for how law enforcement can use digital location data in criminal investigations. This change isn’t small; it gives millions of smartphone users in America stronger privacy protections than they’ve had before.
A Virginia bank robbery sparked the case
The case began with a 2019 robbery operation at a credit union in Midlothian, Virginia. Back then, the police had limited information to solve the case.
In the security video, the robber seemed to have used a cellphone before entering the premises. The investigators were willing to think out of the box.
A geofence warrant was sought to compel Google to search the Location History database. The warrant applied to all phones in the area of 150 meters around the credit union during the robbery.
Initially, Google provided anonymized data on 19 cellphones. After following a procedure of three steps, investigators asked Google to identify three phone numbers.
One of those accounts belonged to Okello Chatrie, who later pleaded guilty. However, he preserved his right to challenge the search in court.
Court expands digital privacy protections
Justice Kagan authored the majority opinion, admitting that it is a reasonable expectation for someone to want their phone location history to stay private.
The Court concluded that the police conduct a Fourth Amendment search when they compelled Google to disclose that information. The reasonable expectation of privacy also exists even if the location data is related to a certain time frame only.
This decision is an extension of the historic Carpenter v. United States decision made in 2018. That case held that historical cellphone tower records require constitutional protection.
The global momentum for digital privacy regulation is growing; the UK is set to regulate AI chatbots under its Online Safety Act, with penalties reaching up to 10% of global revenue.
However, the justices observed that the location data provided by the Location History from Google contains much more detail compared to conventional cell site data. In particular, the Location History collected information about the user’s location every two minutes via GPS, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, cell tower signals, and IP addresses.
The location data could easily identify the exact place where the device was located; sometimes, this location was identified within 20 meters. In some cases, it could even estimate which floor of a building someone occupied.
The Court said that such levels of tracking produce an “exceptionally detailed chronicle” of a person’s whereabouts. Such information needs constitutional protection, the Justices stated.
The third-party doctrine argument fails
Federal prosecutors argued that users voluntarily shared their location information with Google. Under the long-standing third-party doctrine, they said users therefore lost Fourth Amendment protection.
The Supreme Court rejected that view entirely. The majority said people do not meaningfully consent to government access simply because they use smartphones. The same applies when they enable Google’s location services.
The opinion noted that Google encouraged users to activate Location History. But the company never clearly explained how those records could later be obtained by law enforcement.
Geofence warrants remain legal but face tougher scrutiny
The ruling doesn’t go as far as saying geofence warrants are unconstitutional. All the Court decided was that getting Location History data counts as a search under the Fourth Amendment. Whether any specific geofence warrant is lawful will now depend on traditional constitutional standards. These include probable cause and particularity.
Since the Fourth Circuit had said there wasn’t any search in the first place, it never really dug into whether the warrant was good enough. The Supreme Court overturned this decision and sent it back to the Court of Appeal for further proceedings.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson agreed with the outcome. But she suggested that the court should go the extra mile. She wrote that parts of the warrant appeared to violate the Fourth Amendment’s particularity requirement.
Justice Samuel Alito disagreed. He warned that this decision could make constitutional protections for data held by third parties a lot stronger.
The impact could reach far beyond Google
The case comes amid years of increasing use of geofence warrants by the police. In 2020, Google received approximately 11,000 geofence warrants, according to reports. This is a significant increase from fewer than 1,000 geofence warrants only two years prior.
In addition, privacy advocates have argued about the fact that the geofence warrants cover data of lots of innocent persons who were just present at the place where a crime happened.
But the practical impact may also be changing. The Court noted that Google has redesigned how it stores Location History.
In 2025, Google moved these databases from cloud servers to user devices. For this reason, the company is not able to provide access to geofence warrants anymore. Now the company does not store copies of such information anymore.
However, legal specialists believe that the decision will affect future decisions. It will likely affect location information collected by other technology companies and mobile apps that maintain detailed records of users’ movements.
The case has shown that the courts consider precise information about location to be personal information. Therefore, it should receive similar constitutional protections as physical searches, even when it is kept by private companies.
However, the police can continue using geofence warrants. But they must now satisfy constitutional warrant requirements before forcing tech companies to hand over your location history.
