WASHINGTON — On Monday, the Supreme Court ruled that the constitutional right to privacy includes cellphone location data, emerging from a case involving a bank robbery where law enforcement used a geofence warrant to identify a suspect.
Justice Elena Kagan, writing for the 6-3 majority, emphasized that individuals don’t lose their privacy expectations simply by opting into Google’s location tracking features.
“A cellphone user should not be seen as sharing personal information with third parties—who can then disclose it to the government—just by engaging in typical cellphone activities,” Kagan articulated.
In contrast, Justice Samuel Alito dissented, arguing that Okello Chatrie had no reasonable expectation of privacy concerning the data he voluntarily provided to Google.
This ruling represents the latest attempt by the court to apply constitutional protections from 1791 to modern technology that the founders likely couldn’t have imagined.
Following a bank robbery in Richmond, Virginia, police secured a geofence warrant to trace cellphones in proximity to the bank during the May 2019 incident.
Chatrie’s phone was identified through this investigation. Before that, he had managed to evade capture until the police employed this high-tech resource.
The warrant paved the way for a deeper investigation. After confirming that Chatrie was present near the Call Federal Credit Union at the time of the robbery, authorities acquired a search warrant for his residence. This led to the discovery of nearly $100,000 cash, including bills that were tied to the bank teller.
Chatrie ultimately pleaded guilty and was sentenced to nearly 12 years behind bars. His lawyers contended during the appeal that the evidence collected should have been inadmissible.
They argued that the warrant breached his privacy rights because it granted law enforcement access to location histories of individuals near the crime scene without any basis linking them to the robbery. Prosecutors countered that Chatrie waived his privacy rights by choosing to enable Google’s location services.
The Supreme Court, however, did not definitively rule on whether the search adhered to the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable searches. Instead, it sent the case back to a lower court for further examination.
A federal judge previously stated that the search infringed on Chatrie’s rights but permitted the evidence due to the officer’s belief that he was operating legitimately.
While the federal appeals court in Richmond upheld Chatrie’s conviction, it did so with divisions in opinion. Meanwhile, a different federal appeals court in New Orleans declared that geofence warrants might be broadly regarded as unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment.
