The Use of a Geofence Warrant in Argument before the Supreme Court
Petitioner Okello Chatrie was arrested, indicted, and eventually convicted of an armed bank robbery in Midlothian, Virginia after the government obtained from Google location data pursuant to a geofence warrant. Geofence warrants require service providers, like Google, to produce to law enforcement the location data of users near the scene of a crime when it occurred. Whether the warrants are constitutional is a question currently before the U.S. Supreme Court in Chatrie v. United States.
After failed leads to identify the robber, the government obtained a geofence warrant that extended 300 meters in diameter. It sought Google location data for every device present within the geofence for the 1-hour window the bank robbery occurred. Google collects users’ location data through settings configurations and applications like Google Maps, web and application activity like performing a Google search, and Google location accuracy settings on Android devices.
Google released information to the government in 3 steps: first, it provided a list of accounts with location data in the geofence warrant; second, it asked for and received more information about some of the accounts in the geofence; and third, the government asked for the identification of three accounts. The location data provided led the government to Chatrie, whose location history was enabled on his cellular phone.
Chatrie moved to suppress the location data obtained through the geofence warrant. The district court denied his motion, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit affirmed. Chatrie petitioned, and the Court granted, writ of certiorari. On April 27, 2026, the Court heard oral argument.
On behalf of Chatrie, Adam Unikowsky argued that the warrant that authorized the search violated the Fourth Amendment, as “people have a property interest in their data in their accounts on the cloud.” On behalf of the government, Deputy U.S. Solicitor General Eric Feigin contended that Chatrie was “asking for an unprecedented transformation of the Fourth Amendment into an impregnable fortress around records of his public movements that he affirmatively consented to allow Google to create, maintain, and use.”
Several on the Court were immediately skeptical of a Fourth Amendment violation. Chief Justice John Roberts opined, “If you don’t want the government to have your location history, you just flip that off.” He said, “the only reason the government has access to this information is because you decided to make it public.” Justice Samuel Alito stated, “it’s not a question of shutting it off. It’s a question of turning it on.”
For Justice Neil Gorsuch, the question turned on where to draw the line if the Court were to rule that there was a voluntary exposure to Google. Would emails require a warrant, he asked. Unikowsky opined that any such data stored with Google on a cloud would be in jeopardy of government access without a warrant. Feigin, on the other hand, stated the inquiry is narrower—location data is different from digital information stored in a cloud, like emails. He also argued that such data is protected by the Stored Communications Act.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor expressed concern that if there is an element of consent by allowing location history to be shared with Google, then the government would theoretically be able to obtain digital information for any reason, not just for the commission of a crime. She also mentioned that it is “opaque to figure out how to turn these things off.”
Justice Amy Coney Barrett stated that she was “struggling to decide how to think about this case.” She compared it to physical intrusion cases and an individual’s reasonable expectations of privacy. She questioned what expectation of privacy Chatrie had in the data, stressed the limitation of time in the warrant, and noted that the location was a public place.
Some justices raised whether the geofence warrant was sufficiently particular. Justice Kentanji Brown Jackson questioned a lack of criteria in the warrant to narrow the users down. For Justice Kavanaugh, he seemed to suggest the warrant was sufficiently particular. He noted the government went through a lot of steps to narrow the time and place of the warrant, and remarked, “I guess I’m trying to figure out why this was bad police work to get a warrant.” He stated that a lot of Fourth Amendment cases result in counsel that a warrant should have been obtained. “Well, they got a warrant.”
We will provide an update when the Court issues its decision.
Read the oral argument here.
