BREAKING: The United States Supreme Court just issued a major Fourth Amendment ruling on geofence warrants today!

In Chatrie v. United States, the Court held that police conduct a “search” under the Fourth Amendment when they obtain a person’s Google Location History data through a geofence warrant.

In plain English: the government cannot simply use your cell phone’s location history to figure out who was near a crime scene without triggering constitutional protections.

This case involved a bank robbery where police used a geofence warrant to get Google location data for phones near the bank around the time of the crime. That process eventually identified the defendant.

The Supreme Court said people have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their cell-phone location data, even when that data is stored by Google and even when the government is only seeking a short time period.

This does not mean every geofence warrant is automatically invalid. The Court sent the case back for further review on whether this particular warrant satisfied probable cause and particularity requirements.

But the ruling is significant. It confirms that digital location data is not outside the Constitution just because it is held by a technology company.

The Fourth Amendment still matters in the digital age.