"We are all free to write law review articles on this fascinating subject, but that seems like that’s what you’re asking for," Justice Samuel Alito told the court — a blunt moment during two hours of oral argument in a case that asks whether sweeping geofence warrants are constitutional.
The legal question in Chatrie v. The United States
The dispute arises from the 2019 conviction of Okello Chatrie in a bank robbery, in which investigators used a geofence warrant to obtain location data from Google for people who had been within a specific area at a specific time. At issue is whether that kind of warrant — which asks a third party for bulk location records tied to a place and time — constitutes a search under the Fourth Amendment and, if so, what limits must apply.
Petitioner’s argument and the justices’ pushback
Adam Unikowsky, counsel for Chatrie, argued that the geofence warrant here amounted to a constitutionally impermissible search. He told the court, "I just don't agree that one should have to flip off one's location history as well as other cloud services to avoid government surveillance," using that point to broaden the inquiry to whether cloud-stored emails or calendar entries could be similarly accessed. Conservative justices — including Chief Justice John Roberts — questioned why the government shouldn’t be allowed to obtain location data kept by a third party when a user had “opted-in” to sharing it. Several liberal justices also raised concerns about the breadth of bulk data requests; Justice Sonia Sotomayor observed, "This identifies a place, a crime — a limited time frame, but a time frame," and warned that because location data follows users everywhere, "there's no way to predict whether they're going to invade your privacy."
The government’s position and skeptical lines of questioning
When the government argued, the justices probed whether geofence warrants differ materially from requests for other cloud-held content — such as emails or calendar data — and whether analogies to physical searches applied. The bench questioned whether the government could, for example, carry out a physical search of all lockers in a storage facility to find a single gun thought to be there, pressing on how far a bulk request can go before becoming unconstitutional. The court’s questioning suggested interest in limiting geofence warrants by time and space, rather than endorsing an unbounded power to obtain all location records from a provider.
Outside voices: amici, academics, and advocacy groups
Several outside actors filed or commented on briefs. Orin Kerr, a Stanford University law professor who filed a friend-of-the-court brief on the government’s side, wrote on social media that the oral arguments suggested the Court "seem[ed] likely to reject the broader argument Chatrie made about the lawfulness of the warrant" and that the justices "will probably say the geofence warrants have to be limited in time and space." By contrast, Alan Butler, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, which filed a brief supporting Chatrie, said the arguments underscored that the Court is weighing "one of the most consequential privacy questions of the digital age" and urged the Court to hold that the Constitution protects digital data even when stored by an app or cloud provider, and that such records should not be obtainable "without particularized suspicion and close judicial oversight."
Analysis from a privacy practitioner
Casey Waughn, a privacy lawyer and senior associate at Armstrong Teasdale, noted an absence of major focus on the "third-party doctrine" — the doctrine that traditionally limits privacy expectations when information is shared with outside parties. She highlighted two routes Unikowsky pressed before the justices: that a person has a property interest in cloud data; and that a person has a reasonable expectation of privacy in cloud data. "Historically, both of those avenues have been grounds on which the Court has found that … the issue is protected under the Fourth Amendment," she told CyberScoop, framing why the petitioner pursued both arguments.
Implications for Google, privacy advocates, and the courts
- Google: The company has changed how it stores location history — the article notes Google has since moved location data to users’ individual devices — a technical shift that bears on how future warrants would operate in practice.
- Privacy advocates and civil liberties groups: Organizations such as the Electronic Privacy Information Center urged a ruling that would require particularized suspicion and judicial oversight, arguing the stakes are high for protecting sensitive phone-generated records.
- Courts and prosecutors: Observers and amici aligned with the government suggested that the Court may allow geofence warrants to be used lawfully so long as they are constrained in time and space; several justices’ questions reflected interest in imposing such limits rather than broadly endorsing bulk collection.
The session was unusually long for the Supreme Court — two hours — and the justices did not resolve the central tension in argument. Predicting outcomes from oral argument is notoriously uncertain; only Justice Alito signaled a clear skepticism about the need for the Court to decide the matter now. A decision is expected in June or July, and whatever the ruling, it will shape whether and how law enforcement can use third-party location records to identify suspects going forward.
