On June 29, 2026, the U.S. Supreme Court held in Chatrie v. United States that law enforcement officers conducted a Fourth Amendment search when they acquired Okello Chatrie’s location data from Google because an individual has a “reasonable expectation of privacy in his cell-phone location information.” Because a Fourth Amendment search had occurred, law enforcement was required to obtain a valid search warrant prior to obtaining that information. The majority declined to resolve whether the “geofence” warrant at issue satisfied the Fourth Amendment’s probable cause and particularity requirements, leaving that question for lower courts to decide in the first instance.
The decision resolves significant uncertainty as to the scope of constitutional privacy protection for cloud-based location information while opening the door to similar constitutional challenges to law enforcement access to other forms of cloud‑based data. Likewise, in declining to decide whether the multi-step geofence warrant in this case was lawful, the majority left unanswered key questions concerning the warrant procedures that law enforcement—and accordingly, technology companies and other entities that manage electronic customer information—must follow to disclose such information in accordance with constitutional privacy protections.
Background
In 2019, law enforcement officers applied for a “geofence” warrant directed to Google as part of the officers’ investigation into a bank robbery in Virginia. The search proceeded in three steps, as directed by the warrant. At step one, Google was required to disclose anonymous information about the cell phones located within a 150-meter radius of the bank (the “geofence”) near the time of the robbery. At step two, officers would attempt to narrow the list and Google would provide additional, anonymized information about the relevant devices. At step three, officers would further refine the list and Google would reveal the identities of the anonymized users. Pursuant to that warrant, police ultimately obtained from Google a two-hour record of Chatrie’s physical movements during the relevant period and charged him with robbery.
Chatrie moved to suppress the results of the geofence search, arguing that the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement extended to his location information, and that the three-step search warrant law enforcement used was invalid. The district court agreed with Chatrie that a Fourth Amendment search had occurred, triggering the warrant requirement. The court further held that the geofence warrant was legally insufficient. But the court denied Chatrie’s suppression motion, finding that officers had reasonably relied on the warrant in good faith.
A divided panel of the Fourth Circuit affirmed on the ground that no Fourth Amendment search had occurred. The majority held that Chatrie had voluntarily shared his Location History with Google—a third party—and thus enjoyed no reasonable expectation of privacy in that information. On rehearing en banc, the full Fourth Circuit affirmed the district court in a one-sentence per curiam decision, dividing evenly (7–7) over whether the geofence search constituted a Fourth Amendment search. The Supreme Court granted certiorari.
The Supreme Court’s Decision
In a 6–3 decision, the Supreme Court held that law enforcement officers had conducted a Fourth Amendment search by obtaining a record of two hours of Chatrie’s movements from Google, necessitating a warrant. The majority opinion, written by Justice Kagan and joined by Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Sotomayor, Kavanaugh and Jackson, declined to resolve whether the three-step geofence warrant that the officers had obtained satisfied the Fourth Amendment’s requirements of probable cause and particularity. The Court remanded the case for the Fourth Circuit to consider that question in the first instance.
The majority focused on the question whether Chatrie had a “reasonable expectation of privacy” in his Location History maintained by Google. If Chatrie’s expectation of privacy was reasonable, then a Fourth Amendment search had occurred when law enforcement acquired that data. The government argued that Chatrie’s expectation of privacy in his Location History was not reasonable for two reasons. First, under the third-party doctrine, individuals lack any reasonable expectation of privacy in information they share with others. Based on that doctrine, the government argued that Chatrie had relinquished any expectation of privacy over his Location History when he voluntarily disclosed that information to Google. Second, the government argued that disclosure of Chatrie’s whereabouts for two hours was insufficiently revealing to render his expectation of privacy in that information “reasonable.”
The majority rejected both arguments.
As to the “third-party doctrine,” the majority extended its 2018 holding in Carpenter v. United States that an individual had a reasonable expectation of privacy in location data reflecting his movements over the course of several days, notwithstanding the fact that he had shared that location data with a cell-phone company. The Chatrie majority reasoned that, like the defendant in Carpenter, Chatrie had “not truly shared” his Location History with Google “in the normal sense of wanting a third party to see it or use it.” Instead, the “exposure” of that information to Google was the “automatic price of conventional cell-phone usage,” a “pervasive and insistent part of daily life.”
As to whether Chatrie’s expectation of privacy in his cell-phone location information was “reasonable,” the majority stated that “new technology should not transform what individuals had reasonably thought they could withhold from the Government.” Accordingly, although cell-phone location tracking capabilities made it technologically feasible for the government to access a record of Chatrie’s movements, that development did not change Chatrie’s reasonable expectation of privacy in—or the Fourth Amendment’s protection over government access to—his “physical location information.”
Notably, the Court did not limit its Fourth Amendment analysis to location information. Instead, the majority more broadly stated that records such as “emails, documents, photographs, or calendars” stored on third-party servers are also reasonably viewed as “private materials.”
Having held that a search warrant was required, the Court did not evaluate the validity of the particular three-step geofence warrant that law enforcement used in this case. Instead, the Court remanded that question to the Court of Appeals.
Justice Jackson, joined by Justice Sotomayor, wrote a separate concurring opinion. She agreed with the majority that a Fourth Amendment search occurred, but she would have reached the question whether the three-step geofence warrant was valid and held that it was not. In Justice Jackson’s view, because the warrant allowed officers to obtain “sensitive information at steps two and three without having to convince a magistrate that there was probable cause to believe this particular information would uncover evidence related to the crime,” it did not accord with the Fourth Amendment.
Justice Gorsuch wrote an opinion concurring only in the judgment. In his view, the appropriate Fourth Amendment inquiry was whether Chatrie had a property interest in his location information maintained by Google. Because in Justice Gorsuch’s view, “Chatrie’s Location History qualifie[d] as his personal property” and the government accessed it, a Fourth Amendment search occurred and a valid warrant was required.
Justice Alito, joined in part by Justices Thomas and Barrett, dissented. In Justice Alito’s view, the majority opinion was an improper advisory opinion. The Fourth Circuit had decided the case under the “good-faith exception.” Because the majority did not disturb that holding on appeal, the good-faith exception “independently support[ed] the judgment below” notwithstanding the majority’s decision. In addition, Justice Alito expressed the view that two hours of location data tied to a public location did not implicate Carpenter, that Location History is an optional service, and that the third-party doctrine should control.
In a separate dissenting opinion, Justice Barrett noted simply that Chatrie had “no reasonable expectation of privacy in data about his public movements that he voluntarily disclosed to Google.”
Implications
Chatrie establishes that law enforcement must obtain a valid warrant before seeking cell-phone location information or comparable location data from individuals or technology companies. Chatrie further demonstrates Fourth Amendment protection does not apply only to data that covers an extended period of time.
- Companies that maintain electronic customer records should monitor litigation developments to understand Chatrie’s implications for non-location customer information: In dicta, the majority compared constitutionally protected cell-phone location information to “emails, documents, photographs, [and] calendars” stored in the digital cloud, suggesting that the warrant requirement may extend to these and other forms of digital information. The Court also rejected an “app-by-app, feature-by-feature” approach to Fourth Amendment protection, suggesting that a user’s general consent to using a cloud-based service does not render the resulting data beyond the Fourth Amendment’s scope. In-house legal teams responding to law enforcement requests are advised to monitor litigation developments to understand the level of process that may be required to disclose user information now and in the future and regularly update workflows and procedures accordingly.
- Platforms that receive other “reverse” government investigative requests should monitor whether courts extend Chatrie’s warrant requirement to these requests: Parties may ask courts to extend Chatrie’s Fourth Amendment holding to other forms of “reverse” government investigative requests, i.e., requests that an entity search its records to find users whose activity or features match specified criteria. Examples include “reverse keyword search” requests (pursuant to which a company may disclose information about users who searched for specified terms) and facial recognition requests (in which an algorithm compares a photograph submitted by law enforcement to a database of images to identify similar faces).[1] Whether the Court’s holding applies in these contexts is likely to be contested in future litigation, and platforms and organizations processing these requests should consider whether to adjust procedures and protocols in light of new developments.
- Whether law enforcement requests for customer information and other forms of electronic records are “valid” under the Fourth Amendment is likely to be contested in litigation: Because the majority declined to define the probable cause and particularity thresholds law enforcement was required to meet to satisfy the warrant requirement for the geofence search in this case, the Fourth Circuit and other courts across the country will develop the doctrine on that issue. Organizations that process law enforcement requests for electronic customer information should thus monitor litigation over this question in relevant jurisdictions.
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[1] Compare People v. Seymour, 536 P.3d 1260 (Colo. 2023) (Fourth Amendment required a warrant for reverse keyword search), with Commonwealth v. Kurtz, 348 A.3d 133 (Pa. 2025) (no warrant was required for reverse keyword search); State v. Arteaga, 476 N.J. Super. 36 (App. Div. 2023) (compelling disclosure of details of law enforcement’s facial recognition technology search).
