Supreme Court Requires Warrants for Broad Cell-Phone Location Searches but Leaves Specific Warrant in Robbery Case for Review

The Supreme Court ruled on June 29 that law enforcement must obtain a warrant before using broad geofence searches to collect cell phone location data from companies such as Google. The 6-3 decision rejected the Trump administration argument that no warrant is required for such surveillance.

The case centered on Okello Chatrie, who was convicted after robbing the Midlothian, Virginia, branch of the Call Federal Credit Union in May 2019.

The robber took $195,000 in cash while holding a cell phone. Police used a judicially approved geofence warrant to obtain location data showing Chatrie was in or near the bank 10 minutes before the robbery and left shortly afterward. Google initially returned information on 19 users.

Chatrie pleaded guilty to federal armed robbery and firearm charges and received a sentence of nearly 12 years in prison. The court did not decide whether the specific warrant in his case was valid and instead returned the matter to a lower court for further review. Justice Elena Kagan wrote the majority opinion.

“The Fourth Amendment must, as ever, protect against unjustified government intrusion on the privacy of the individual,” she stated. ” Justice Samuel Alito dissented, saying he would have held that no warrant is required. ” The decision builds on a 2017 Supreme Court ruling that required warrants for location information obtained from cell towers.

NBC News reported the outcome and quoted the justices directly from the opinions.