The Supreme Court ruled Monday that the Fourth Amendment protects your location history — even when a third party like Google collects it. The 6-3 decision effectively guts the government’s use of geofence warrants, which let police scoop up location data from every phone in a given area.
The case involved Okello Chatrie, who was sentenced to 12 years for bank robbery after police used a geofence warrant to identify him through Google data. He had opted in to share his location every few minutes. Cops worked with Google to narrow down the suspect list and made their arrest. Chatrie challenged the warrant as an unconstitutional search.
Justice Elena Kagan wrote the majority opinion. She said it does not matter how much data the government grabs — it is still a search. People carry phones and enable location tracking because apps do not work without it. That is modern life, not consent to surveillance.
“Google repeatedly prompts users to turn on the service, often warning that devices will not work correctly otherwise, while not disclosing in that prompt how frequently users location information would be recorded, how precise it would be, or how it might be given to the government,” the majority noted.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor added that even short-term monitoring can reveal deeply personal details — familial, political, professional, religious, and sexual associations. Visiting a clinic, a lawyer’s office, or a protest tells a story.
The government had argued that Chatrie voluntarily shared his location, that the data only showed public movements, and that the amount collected was too small to warrant privacy protections. All three arguments failed.
In dissent, Justice Samuel Alito warned the ruling would “unleash upheaval” and suggested an app-by-app standard would have been better. He questioned where the line falls for services like Apple Pay. Kagan shot back that the point of carrying a smartphone is using what is on it — you do not surrender constitutional rights by doing ordinary things.
Privacy advocates and tech companies both celebrated. The Electronic Frontier Foundation called it a reaffirmation that location data revealing physical movements deserves Fourth Amendment protection. The Computer and Communications Industry Association, whose members include Google and Apple, praised the ruling for clarifying that privacy rights persist regardless of the technology involved.
