| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Court | Supreme Court of the United States |
| Docket | No. 25-112 |
| Decided | June 29, 2026 |
| Vote | 6–3 |
| Holding | Use of a geofence warrant to obtain cellphone location data is a Fourth Amendment search |
| Disposition | Remanded for further proceedings on the warrant's validity |
Chatrie v. United States is a US Supreme Court case on geofence warrants — court orders compelling technology companies to identify devices present in a defined area during a defined time window, drawing on stored location data. On June 29, 2026, the Court ruled 6–3 that law enforcement's use of a geofence warrant to obtain cellphone location data constitutes a search under the Fourth Amendment, and remanded the case for further proceedings on whether the warrant used was valid (Source: scotusblog.com; supremecourt.gov).
Background
The case arose from a 2019 bank-robbery investigation in which investigators used a geofence warrant to obtain location data for devices near the crime scene, identifying Okello Chatrie as a suspect. Geofence warrants query location databases assembled from smartphone operating systems and apps, and their use had divided lower courts on whether such queries are Fourth Amendment searches requiring particularized warrants.
Decision
The Court held that obtaining cellphone location data through a geofence warrant is a search, extending the digital-privacy line of cases that includes Carpenter v. United States (2018) on cell-site location information. The 6–3 decision did not resolve whether the specific warrant was valid; that question was remanded (Source: scotusblog.com).
Relation to AI policy
Geofence queries are an instance of automated, database-scale surveillance of the kind addressed in AI and Surveillance and AI and Privacy: the technique depends on algorithmic search over mass location datasets rather than individualized observation. The decision constrains a data-driven investigative technique and bears on how courts treat other bulk-analytic tools used by law enforcement.
Relationships
- related: AI and Surveillance — geofence warrants are a mass location-surveillance technique
- related: AI and Privacy — Fourth Amendment treatment of database-scale queries
- related: AI and Civil Liberties — law-enforcement data-analytics constraints