Supreme Court Hears Chatrie v. United States: The Case That Could End Geofence Warrants

What happened On April 27, 2026, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Chatrie v. United States (No. 25-112), a case that could determine whether police can legally use geofence warrants to collect location data from every phone in a given area. A geofence warrant works differently from a traditional warrant. Instead of targeting a specific person based on probable cause, police define a geographic area and a time window, then compel companies like Google to hand over location data from every device that was in that area. The practice has been used thousands of times by law enforcement agencies across the country. The case Okello Chatrie was identified as a suspect in a 2018 armed robbery near a bank in Midlothian, Virginia. Police obtained a geofence warrant that required Google to produce location data for all devices near the bank during the time of the robbery. Chatrie was identified from that data and subsequently convicted. Chatrie's legal team argues that the warrant violated the Fourth Amendment because it was not particular to him. It swept up location data from an unknown number of innocent people who happened to be nearby. The government argues the warrant was properly scoped and that the data collection was reasonable. What the justices said According to the oral argument transcript, justices pressed both sides on the scope of the warrants and whether they function more like general searches, which the Fourth Amendment prohibits. The ACLU's amicus brief argues that geofence warrants are "the digital equivalent of a door-to-door search" and that allowing them undermines the particularity requirement that has protected against general warrants since the founding era. The government's position is that the warrants are narrowly tailored by time and place, and that Google's role as a third-party intermediary means users have no reasonable expectation of privacy in their location data under the third-party doctrine. Why it matters The Brookings Institution analysis notes that geofence warrants have been used in thousands of investigations. Google reported receiving over 11,000 geofence warrant requests in a single year. If the Court rules them unconstitutional, it would force a significant change in how law enforcement accesses location data. This case also intersects with the Court's 2018 decision in Carpenter v. United States, which held that accessing historical cell-site location information requires a warrant. The question in Chatrie is whether the broader sweep of a geofence warrant can satisfy the Fourth Amendment's particularity requirement. What to watch A ruling is expected by the end of the Court's term in June 2026. The decision will likely address: Whether geofence warrants satisfy the Fourth Amendment's particularity requirement Whether the third-party doctrine applies to bulk location data collected by tech companies What standard applies when police collect data from people who are not suspects Related tools What's My IP — See what location data your browser exposes VPN Check — Test whether your VPN is leaking location data Browser Fingerprint — See what your browser reveals about you