The Supreme Court has issued its long-awaited decision in Chatrie v. United States, holding that police conducted a Fourth Amendment search when they obtained Chatrie’s cell phone location information from Google pursuant to a geofence warrant, notwithstanding the short period of time (two hours) for which the government sought the data and the third-party doctrine. The decision significantly extends the Court’s landmark 2018 ruling in Carpenter v. United States by confirming that constitutional protections apply not only to historical cell-site location information (CSLI), but also to the increasingly precise device location history maintained by tech companies, regardless of the duration of the location history sought.
Importantly, however, the Court did not decide whether the geofence warrant used in this case satisfied the Fourth Amendment’s particularity and probable cause requirements. Instead, it remanded that question to the Fourth Circuit, leaving many of the practical questions surrounding geofence warrants unresolved.
Background
The case arose from an armed bank robbery in Virginia. After traditional investigative methods failed to identify a suspect, investigators obtained a geofence warrant directing Google to disclose Location History data for devices that had been within a defined geographic area surrounding the crime scene during a one-hour period. Through a multi-step back-and-forth process between Google and law enforcement we’ve previously summarized, investigators ultimately identified Chatrie as a suspect.
In 2022, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia concluded that the geofence warrant likely violated the Fourth Amendment because it lacked probable cause and particularity. The court nevertheless declined to suppress the evidence under the good-faith exception, finding that officers reasonably relied on the warrant because the law governing geofence warrants was unsettled at the time. On appeal, the equally divided Fourth Circuit, sitting en banc, affirmed in a one-sentence order with no majority opinion.
The Supreme Court’s Decision
In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court held that obtaining Location History data is a Fourth Amendment search. The Court held that an individual has a reasonable expectation of privacy in records about their cell phone’s location, and police intrude on that constitutionally protected interest when they obtain the information — even when the information is held by a third-party provider.
Building directly on Carpenter, the Court concluded that Google’s Location History data provides an equally, if not more, “detailed, encyclopedic, and effortlessly compiled” record of a person’s movements than historical CSLI, creating an “intimate window into a person’s life,” revealing not only where someone travels, but potentially their associations, habits, religious practices, medical visits, and other highly personal information. Indeed, the Court acknowledged that Location History implicates even greater privacy interests than CSLI because users reasonably regard it as part of their own records—likening it to “other private materials” such as “emails, documents, photographs, or calendars” that remain private even when stored on Google’s servers.
The Court also answered a question Carpenter left unresolved: whether the duration of the requested location data affects the constitutional analysis. Specifically, Carpenter had left open the possibility that a law enforcement request for CSLI over a short period (something less than seven days) might not require a warrant. The Chatrie Court concluded that the duration of the requested location data is irrelevant, and that a search warrant is required regardless of how much location data the government seeks.
The Court further built on Carpenter in concluding that the third-party doctrine does not defeat one’s reasonable expectation of privacy in Location History because such information is “not truly shared” with a third party in the ordinary sense. Harkening back to the noted ubiquity of smart phones, the Court noted that use of cell phones and the location-based services they enable are “indispensable to participation in modern society.”
What the Court Did Not Decide
Although Chatrie answers the question of whether obtaining geofence location data is a Fourth Amendment search, it leaves open the question whether the novel “multi-step” geofence warrant issued to Google was reasonable, remanding the case to the Fourth Circuit to decide whether, at each step of the search process, the warrant satisfied the Fourth Amendment’s requirements of particularity and probable cause. Chatrie thus leaves unresolved questions about whether “reverse warrants” that search for user information based on user activity or input—rather than based on user identifiers—are permissible.
It also does not resolve when information is “truly shared” with a third party, and what type of consent is needed for location data to be shareable. This issue will likely continue to arise, especially where, unlike here, providers want to rely on such consent either to monetize location data, or merely to provide it in response to foreign law enforcement demands under the new e-Evidence Directive in the EU.
Key Takeaways
The Chatrie decision marks an important development in Fourth Amendment jurisprudence governing digital location data. The clear holding of Chatrie is that the government must obtain a search warrant to compel the production of mobile device location data, even when the data is held by a provider after the user has allowed it to be collected, and regardless of the time period sought. Subpoenas and court orders, which do not satisfy the Fourth Amendment’s probable cause and particularity requirements, will not suffice.
Legally, the decision directly restricts law enforcement rather than online service providers, as it rests on the Fourth Amendment, rather than the Stored Communications Act or another statute regulating the conduct of private entities. Providers are not “state actors” that are subject to liability under the Fourth Amendment. Nevertheless, Chatrie will still impact providers, as it is likely to affect consumer expectations regarding when, and under what circumstances, providers turn over sensitive user information to law enforcement.
Chatrie also marks the continuation of trend, started in United States v. Warshak, and continuing through Carpenter, where courts have found that the Fourth Amendment offers even greater protection than the Stored Communications Act when it comes to forms of sensitive user information. Tech providers typically respond to Stored Communications Act orders (18 U.S.C. § 2703(d)) for “non-content” user information, but, for some categories of data, such orders may no longer always be sufficient after Chatrie, and instead a warrant may be required to obtain certain equally sensitive information (though complying with such process should still confer immunity to providers unless there are prior judicial decisions on point).
For more discussions of the implications of Chatrie, clients and prospective clients are welcome to join us for a free webinar on Monday, July 13, 2026 at 3:00 PM Eastern, where we will discuss the future implications of Chatrie for the provider and the data location vendor community.