Justices Say Constitution Protects People's Location History

The Supreme Court ruled on Monday that people have an expectation of privacy from the government as their mobile devices track them throughout their daily activities, even when that information is shared with companies like Google and Apple.

The 6-3 decision in Chatrie v. United States extends Fourth Amendment protections to data that people hand over to tech companies, meaning police need a warrant to obtain it. Justices Samuel Alito, Amy Coney Barrett and Clarence Thomas dissented.

The Trump administration argued that users did not have an expectation of privacy after voluntarily sharing their location data with companies like Google.

“An individual has a reasonable expectation of privacy in records about his cell phone’s location, and police intrude on that constitutionally protected interest when they demand the information — even though for only a limited time, and from a third-party tech company,” Justice Elena Kagan wrote for the majority.

The case involves a 2019 bank robbery in Virginia, where police arrested Okello Chatrie after using a geofence warrant to locate all devices near the scene of the crime.

Police have increasingly relied on broad search warrants to aid their investigations in the digital age — including requests to tech companies for information on anyone who searched for specific phrases or had certain types of conversations with AI chatbots.

Google has changed how it collects and stores location history, announcing in 2023 that the data would be stored directly on people’s devices rather than the company’s servers. That change prevents Google from complying with these requests for location history as it no longer holds the information.

Privacy advocates argue that such broad warrants targeting tech companies’ users are a Fourth Amendment violation because they are not narrowly tailored and could gather data on innocent people.

“Although the Court stopped short of striking down these warrants as inherently unconstitutional, we look forward to pressing lower courts to eliminate these warrants once and for all,” Andrew Crocker, the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s surveillance litigation director, said in a statement.

The case will return to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to determine whether the warrant in Chatrie’s case was properly filed.

Alito criticized Monday’s decision for failing to address the legality of the warrant in Chatrie’s case.

“Indeed, by refusing to review the one question that could have at least theoretically given Chatrie some hope of relief, the Court carefully set the stage for its planned performance: striking a pose as a great champion of privacy in the digital age. I cannot support this irresponsible escapade,” he wrote.