Supreme Court Expands Privacy Protections for Google Location Data

The Supreme Court ruled Monday that police conducted a Fourth Amendment search when they obtained a robbery suspect’s Google Location History data through a geofence warrant, a decision that strengthens privacy protections for cell-phone location records while leaving key questions about the warrant itself unresolved.

In a 5-4 decision, the Court held that people have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the location data stored by their cell phones, even when the information is held by a technology company and covers only a short period of time. Justice Elena Kagan wrote the majority opinion, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Brett Kavanaugh and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

The ruling came in the case of Okello Chatrie, who was charged after police in Virginia used a geofence warrant directed to Google while investigating a 2019 credit union robbery in Midlothian. Investigators did not have a suspect, but witness accounts and surveillance footage showed the robber appeared to use a cell phone while approaching the credit union from a nearby church.

A geofence warrant asks a technology company to identify devices that were inside a mapped area during a set time. Unlike a traditional warrant aimed at a known suspect, a geofence warrant often starts with a place and time, then works backward to identify people who were nearby.

Police asked Google for Location History data from devices within a 150-meter radius of the credit union around the time of the robbery. The warrant used a three-step process. Google first provided anonymized location data for 19 devices within the area. Officers then narrowed the list to nine users and received more anonymized data showing their movements during a longer two-hour period, including locations outside the geofence. Police then narrowed the group again, and Google provided identifying information for three users, including Chatrie.

Federal prosecutors later charged Chatrie with robbery and related firearm offenses. He asked a court to suppress the Google data, arguing that police had searched private information in violation of the Fourth Amendment and that the warrant did not meet constitutional standards.

A federal trial judge found that the warrant “plainly” violated Fourth Amendment rights, but allowed the evidence under the good-faith exception, which can permit evidence when officers reasonably rely on a warrant issued by a judge.

A divided Fourth Circuit panel later ruled that no search occurred because Chatrie had no reasonable expectation of privacy in two hours of Location History data exposed to Google. After rehearing the case, the full Fourth Circuit affirmed in a short order.

The Supreme Court rejected that approach. Kagan wrote that the Fourth Amendment applies when police obtain Google Location History data because the information can reveal a detailed record of a person’s movements. The majority compared the case to Carpenter v. United States, the Court’s 2018 decision holding that police access to historical cell-site location information is a search under the Fourth Amendment.

Location History, the Court said, can be even more precise than the cell-site data in Carpenter. According to the opinion, Google’s service could record a phone’s location every two minutes or so, place it within about 20 meters, and in some circumstances estimate elevation, including which floor of a building the phone was on.

The Fourth Amendment protects people from unreasonable government searches and seizures. A search occurs when the government intrudes on an area where a person has a reasonable expectation of privacy. Once police conduct qualifies as a search, the government generally must justify it with a valid warrant or another recognized exception.

The majority said the short time period did not remove the case from Fourth Amendment protection. Even brief location tracking, the Court said, can reveal sensitive information about a person’s associations, habits and private life. A two-hour window could show visits to homes, medical offices, schools, places of worship, political events or other locations that people would not expect the government to review without constitutional limits.

The Court also rejected the government’s argument that Chatrie lost privacy protection because Google held the data. Under the third-party doctrine, information voluntarily shared with another business, such as a bank or phone company, often receives less Fourth Amendment protection. Kagan wrote that Location History is different because cell phones and the services connected to them are part of modern daily life, and users do not meaningfully share a full record of their movements in the way earlier cases described.

Justice Jackson wrote separately, joined by Sotomayor, saying she would have gone further and found that at least the second and third stages of the warrant violated the Fourth Amendment. Jackson said the warrant left too much discretion to officers after the first round of data, allowing them to seek more sensitive information without enough direction from a judge.

Justice Neil Gorsuch agreed with the judgment but said he would have reached the result through a different Fourth Amendment theory. Rather than relying on a reasonable expectation of privacy, Gorsuch said Chatrie’s Location History data should be treated as his personal property, or “effects,” protected from government search.

Justice Samuel Alito dissented, joined in part by Justice Clarence Thomas and in part by Justice Amy Coney Barrett. Alito argued that the Court expanded Carpenter too far and issued a ruling that may not affect the outcome of Chatrie’s case because lower courts had already relied on the good-faith exception. Barrett wrote separately that Chatrie had no reasonable expectation of privacy in public movements that he voluntarily disclosed to Google.

The Supreme Court vacated the Fourth Circuit’s judgment and sent the case back for further proceedings on whether the multi-step geofence warrant satisfied the Fourth Amendment at each stage of the search process.