The Supreme Court ruled that police using smartphone Location History data to identify suspects conducted a “search” under the Fourth Amendment, but it sent Okello Chatrie’s case back to lower courts to decide whether the tracking was reasonable. The decision
For a bank-robbery case in Virginia, the Supreme Court drew a sharp line—then left the most urgent question for someone else to answer.
Police had used smartphone Location History data from Google to track down Okello Chatrie after the May 20. 2019. robbery of Call Federal Credit Union in Midlothian. The Supreme Court agreed that what police did counted as a “search” under the Fourth Amendment. But the justices sent the case back to lower courts to determine whether the search was “reasonable. ” including whether each step was properly described and supported by probable cause.
Sonia Sotomayor also apologized for comments she had made earlier about Justice Brett Kavanaugh. describing them as “inappropriate” and “hurtful.” The smartphone ruling—issued in a splintered decision—still carried its own momentum. landing squarely on how far warrants can reach when they rely on location data from millions of phones.
Chatrie was convicted in the case after police obtained a warrant that directed Google to identify smartphones near the bank at the time of the robbery. The warrant narrowed the suspects to three. But the search also swept in more than a dozen people who remained anonymous to police who were in a church nearby.
Chatrie argued the warrant violated his Fourth Amendment rights because police had not identified him as a suspect before demanding Google sift through Google’s Location History data for “500 million” customers to find his Samsung Galaxy X9 phone. The Justice Department countered that blocking this kind of search would handicap police investigating violent crimes like murder. kidnapping. and robbery.
In the court’s reasoning. Justice Elena Kagan wrote for a 6-3 majority that police conducted a “search” when they gained access to Location History data. Kagan said the Constitution protects an individual’s reasonable expectation of privacy in records about a cell phone’s location. and that police intrude on that protected interest when they demand the information.
The court’s return to lower courts shifts the fight from whether the activity counts as a “search” to whether the warrant process met constitutional safeguards—step by step—throughout the case. The Supreme Court instructed that reasonableness means “each of its steps was properly described with particularity and found to be supported by probable cause.”.
The underlying facts help explain why the justices split. Chatrie pleaded guilty to robbing Call Federal Credit Union at gunpoint on May 20, 2019, and was sentenced to nearly 12 years in prison. Video from the bank showed Chatrie walking into the building at 4:52 p.m. while talking on a cell phone.
Authorities described the technique as a “geofence” search—one that sets boundaries to search within. The data used was described as fairly precise. measured to within 3 meters every 2 minutes using the Global Positioning System. Bluetooth beacons. cell phone towers. and local wifi networks. Google stopped storing location data on its servers in 2023, but the information remains on individual phones.
Before the Supreme Court, judges in the U.S. District Court and the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had each voiced concerns that the search violated the Fourth Amendment. Even so. the lower courts allowed the phone data to be used for Chatrie’s conviction because they found police made a good-faith effort in obtaining a warrant.
Justice Kentanji Brown Jackson agreed with the Supreme Court’s decision. but she wrote alongside Justice Sonia Sotomayor about concerns tied to how the search was narrowed. Jackson said the case showed why the lack of “magisterial oversight” is dangerous. Her focus was not only on whether police used location data. but on how the search was constrained in coordination with Google rather than through a magistrate judge setting limits.
Justice Neil Gorsuch took aim at Chatrie’s claim of privacy. He questioned why digitally tracking Chatrie’s movements over an hour or two would invade a reasonable expectation of privacy when an officer tailing him for the same length of time would not.
Justice Samuel Alito disagreed with the Supreme Court’s decision. Justices Clarence Thomas and Amy Coney Barrett joined Alito in part. Alito wrote that additional judicial review would not change the outcome for Chatrie and said the majority opinion’s approach would send “seismic waves” through Fourth Amendment doctrine while leaving his view of the result untouched. “I cannot support this irresponsible escapade,” Alito wrote.
Taken together. the ruling leaves lower courts with a narrower but still high-stakes mission: determine whether the steps of the geofence warrant—described as precisely as they were demanded—were also backed by probable cause with the specificity the Fourth Amendment requires. For defendants. the practical impact is simple: whether a warrant that starts broad and ends with a handful of suspects can ever be constitutionally “reasonable.” For law enforcement. the message is sharper: it will no longer be enough to call the search a tool that solves crimes. The search itself—and the way it was authorized—will be judged with a microscope.
Supreme Court Fourth Amendment smartphone tracking geofence warrant Location History Google Okello Chatrie Call Federal Credit Union Fourth Amendment reasonableness Eric Feigin Elena Kagan Sonia Sotomayor Brett Kavanaugh