The Supreme Court takes up Chatrie v. United States to decide whether geofence warrants, which sweep location data on all nearby devices, violate the Fourth Amendment.
The Supreme Court has agreed to hear *Chatrie v. United States*, a case that will determine whether geofence warrants, which compel technology companies to disclose location data for every device present in a defined geographic area during a specified time window, violate the Fourth Amendment's prohibition on unreasonable searches [1]. The case marks the Court's first direct engagement with digital privacy doctrine since *Carpenter v. United States* in 2018, when the justices held that long-term cell-site location tracking constitutes a search requiring a warrant [1].
The case arose from a federal robbery prosecution. Law enforcement investigators obtained a geofence warrant directed at Google, requiring the company to produce location history records for all users whose devices were detected near the crime scene at the relevant time [1]. That data sweep identified Okello Chatrie as a suspect [1]. Chatrie challenged the warrant as constitutionally infirm, arguing that the sweeping, suspicionless collection of location records from individuals who had no connection to any criminal activity cannot survive Fourth Amendment scrutiny [1]. Lower courts ruled against him, and the Supreme Court granted certiorari to resolve the question [1].
The stakes extend well beyond this prosecution. Geofence warrants have become a routine investigative tool. Because they are issued before investigators identify any particular suspect, they necessarily capture location data on an indeterminate number of innocent people who happened to be in proximity to a targeted location [1]. Courts of appeals have split on the constitutional framework, and the absence of a governing standard has left both law enforcement agencies and technology companies operating without clear legal boundaries [1]. A broad ruling could effectively curtail a surveillance method police departments across the country use in violent-crime, protest, and counterterrorism investigations. A narrow ruling tied to the specific mechanics of Google's Sensorvault database could leave the broader doctrine unsettled.
The doctrinal fault line runs through two competing principles: the third-party doctrine, which holds that information voluntarily shared with a third party loses Fourth Amendment protection, and the *Carpenter* trajectory, which recognized that certain categories of digital data are so revealing of private life that the old doctrine cannot hold without modification [1]. Chatrie's lawyers contend that geofence warrants occupy precisely that category. The government argues that users who enable location services on their devices have assumed the risk of disclosure.
A decision is expected before the Court's term ends, likely by late June 2026 [1]. The ruling will directly govern how federal and state investigators design and execute location-based warrants, and how companies like Google respond to them.