On Point

SCOTUS holds that cell phone user has reasonable expectation of privacy in location history data; remands to court of appeals to assess whether a geofence warrant was reasonable.

Chatrie v. United States, USSC No. 25-112, 6/29/2026, reversing a decision of the 4th Circuit, Scotusblog page (with links to briefs and commentary)

SCOTUS determined that police conduct a search when they gain access to location history data from a third party because a person has a reasonable expectation of privacy in records about his or her cell phone’s location.  The Court remanded to the federal court of appeals to determine whether the geofence warrant at issue was reasonable.

In May 2019, a man robbed a credit union in Midlothian, Virginia and left with $195,000.  Witnesses and surveillance footage established that the man approached the credit union from a nearby church while talking on a cell phone.  (Slip op at pp. 6-7).

Several weeks later, police obtained a geofence warrant directing Google to provide its data for cell phones within a 150-meter radius of the credit union.  The warrant established a three-step process.  First, Google was ordered to provide location data for all cell phones within the geofence 30 minutes before and after the robbery, which included 19 devices.  The data did not include the name of the cell phone’s owner.  After police narrowed down the list of 19 devices to 9 by reviewing time-stamped location coordinates for each device compared to the time and location information for the robbery, Google was directed to provide cell phone locations inside and outside the geofence from one hour before and after the robbery for those 9 devices, but not the identity of the phones’ users.  Finally, police further narrowed down list to 3 by comparing the additional information regarding travel and time against the time and location specific to the robbery.  After the third step, Google was directed to provide the name and phone number for the three devices on the final list.  (Slip op. at pp. 7-8).

One of those devices belonged to Chatrie and his location data showed that he entered the geofenced area ten minutes before the robbery and proceeded to a residential area immediately after leaving the credit union.  After he was charged in federal court with robbery and related firearms offenses, he moved to suppress the location data provided by Google.  The district court denied the motion because the police relied in good faith on the geofence warrant.  The Fourth Circuit affirmed, but on different grounds — that Chatrie did not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the location history he voluntarily exposed to Google.  SCOTUS granted certiorari only on whether police violated the Fourth Amendment by obtaining Chatrie’s location data.  (Slip op. at pp. 8-9).

The Court held that “an  individual has a legitimate expectation of privacy in the information Location History collects about his cell phone’s – meaning his own – movements.  The police invade that expectation, and thus conduct a search, when they acquire that information, even though for only a limited period of time and even though via a third-party tech company.”  (Slip op. at p. 13).  The Court compared location history to other private materials such as emails, documents, photographs, or calendars “that even if stored on Google’s servers, a user reasonably views as his own.  And as a result, that he reasonably expects to be shielded from the inquisitive eyes of government.”  (Slip op. at p. 18).

The Court rejected the government’s argument that accessing only a short amount of cell-phone location information does not qualify as a search under the Fourth Amendment because “we have never understood Fourth Amendment protections as kicking in only once an intrusion goes too far.  Where the Fourth Amendment applies, it applies – regardless of the quality or quantity of information the government obtains.”  (Slip op. at p. 20).

Relying on its 2018 decision in Carpenter in which it held that police conduct a search when they obtain cell-site location information from a cell service provider, the Court also rejected the government’s third-party doctrine argument that Chatrie lost his legitimate expectation of privacy by authorizing Google to collect, retain, and use his location information.  The Court noted that Carpenter refused to apply the third-party doctrine because a person does not voluntarily expose, in any “’meaningful sense,’”  their location data to a third party given that cell phones are a “’pervasive and insistent part of daily life.’”  (Slip op. at p. 25) (quoting Carpenter).  Similarly, exposing location history is “merely what happens when a user avails himself of one of the services on his cell phone . . . [I]t is the automatic price of conventional cell-phone usage . . . So just as the third-party doctrine did not apply in Carpenter, it does not apply here.”  (Slip op. at p. 26).

The Court remanded to the Fourth Circuit to determine whether, “at each step of the search process, the warrant satisfied the Fourth Amendment’s requirements of particularity and probable cause.”

Justice Kagan wrote the opinion of the Court, which was joined by Chief Justice Roberts and justices Sotomayor, Kavanaugh, and Jackson.

Justice Jackson, joined by Justice Sotomayor, issued a concurring opinion that the second and third stages of the search process did not satisfy the Fourth Amendment’s particularity requirement.  (Jackson, J., concurring op. at p. 1).

Justice Gorsuch concurred in the judgment, but did not join the Court’s opinion because it relied on Katz’s reasonable expectation of privacy test, which he considers to have no basis in the Constitution’s text or history.  Instead, “[t]o decide whether the Fourth Amendment is in play, I would consult its terms, asking first whether Location History qualifies as one of Mr. Chatrie’s papers or effects, and then asking whether the government searched those papers or effects.”  (Gorsuch, J., concurring op. at p. 4). Justice Gorsuch considered Chatrie’s location data his personal property and it was therefore subject to the Fourth Amendment’s restrictions when the government compelled Google to “rummage through” his data and examined the data for itself.  (Gorsuch, J. concurring op. at pp. 5-8).

Justice Alito, joined in part by justices Thomas and Barrett, dissented.  Justice Thomas joined Justice Alito’s dissent that the Court should not have granted certiorari because “no resolution of the question on which the Court granted certiorari could have disturbed the Fourth Amendment’s good-faith holding.”  (Alito, J., dissenting op. at p. 5).

Justice Barrett joined Justice Alito’s dissent finding that Chatrie did not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in his location data.  (Alito, J., dissenting op. at p. 12).