Photo Credit: John C. Ellis, Jr., Google Data and Geofence Warrant Process, National Litigation Support Blog for Federal/Community Defenders and CJA Practitioners (June 6, 2022), https://nlsblog.org/2022/06/06/google-data-and-geofence-warrant-process-2/#more-1492.
Authored by: Dalton Trimmer
An American citizen has “the right . . . to be secure . . . against unreasonable searches and seizures.”[1] For the Government to violate this right, it must conduct a search or seizure without a warrant that is stated with particularity and supported by probable cause.[2] Originally, the standard for reviewing warrants was defined by whether the search or seizure was performed by physical trespass at common law.[3] Society and technology continue to develop daily, however, and eventually the doctrine governing the Fourth Amendment required an addition to protect the rights of citizens against trespass in places other than physical property.[4] Katz v. United States extended the right from a citizen’s physical property to include those areas of his life where he enjoys an actual and reasonable expectation of privacy.[5] An established concept behind the reasonable expectation standard is that of third-party doctrine, where there is no reasonable expectation of privacy should the information be revealed to a third party, even if it is revealed in the course of a business relationship or other agreement where the use of such information is limited, because of the clear and obvious risk of that information being revealed to another.[6] Thus, the question of modern warrant law is more often whether an individual has a reasonable expectation of privacy in a certain operation of daily life. An increasingly common set of facts has recently created a split amongst federal circuit courts on how to answer this question.
In United States v. Chatrie, defendant Okello Chatrie pled guilty to armed credit union robbery.[7] On May 20th, 2019, an individual with a gun robbed the Call Federal Credit Union in Midlothian, Virginia, and escaped westward without witness identification.[8] The following investigation by police encountered several hurdles, which they were not able to surmount with traditional techniques.[9] However, noticing that the suspect possessed a phone during the robbery, the investigator requested what has become known as a geofence warrant from the local county court.[10] This warrant led to the identification and eventual conviction of Okello Chatrie.[11]
The term geofence warrant refers to an increasingly common request by law enforcement, sent to Google, concerning the “’location history’” for a defined area.[12] One of the interrelated features of the many products and services provided by Google, location history is the collection, analysis, and manipulation of data concerning a user’s geographic location.[13] It can either be utilized by the user or sold to a tertiary company for advertising purposes.[14] Important for the case in Chatrie, however, is that for location history information to be monitored and stored by Google, the user must provide a form of consent on at least four separate pathways.[15] Additionally, the user has the ability to “review, edit, or delete any information that Google has already obtained,” and may opt out at any time, at which point Google ceases to monitor and record his geographic location data.[16] To deal with the consistent increase in geofence warrant requests from law enforcement, Google has developed a legal process to work through and narrow down the account-specific data within a location defined by law enforcement so as to limit the number of individuals whose privacy is at risk of being exposed.[17]
At trial, the defendant moved to suppress the information gained from the geofence warrant, challenging its constitutionality under the Fourth Amendment.[18] The district court denied the defendant’s motion, but did so with qualms; the court was concerned with the issue of whether geofence warrants expanded beyond the reasonable expectation of privacy due to American citizens, as determined by Katz, with particular focus on holdings in similar cases concerned with Cell Site Location Information and the third-party doctrine.[19] However, the court ultimately denied the motion because the warrant fell under the good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule, as the warrant was sought under “’objectively reasonable’” justification.[20]
On appeal, the Fourth Circuit panel affirmed the outcome on constitutional grounds rather than the good-faith exception.[21] The majority focused on the district court’s concern about the CSLI and third-party cases, utilizing Carpenter and another Fourth Circuit case to define that there is an exception to the voluntary provision of information under third-party doctrine.[22] Specifically, it emphasized that the breadth and depth of the Government’s intrusion into that voluntarily provided information can constitute a search, if it comes to represent “’an all-encompassing record of the holder’s whereabouts’” that allows for the Government “to peer into a person’s ‘privacies of life.’”[23] Utilizing this standard, the court found that the Government’s use of the geofence information did not constitute a significant enough invasion of privacy to overcome that voluntary provision of information, allowing the third-party doctrine to control the case and define the geofence warrant as not a search.[24] The dissent, however, argued that Carpenter did not create a generalized standard for the exception, but rather a mechanical multi-factor test to overcome the third-party doctrine.[25] This multi-factor test was based on the comprehensive, retrospective, and intimate nature, and the ease of access to the information.[26]
Because of the conflicting interpretations of Carpenter amongst other circuits, the Fourth Circuit decided to rehear the case en banc.[27] The Fourth Circuit ultimately affirmed the denial of the motion for suppression, but what was produced was a plurality consisting of eight different opinions, which was countered by a single dissent.[28] The plurality ranges from those judges who agree with the majority of the original panel hearing, in so many words, and those who lean more toward the original dissent’s argument, and more still arguing that, despite whatever outcome of the constitutional analysis, the good-faith exception certainly applies.[29] The opinions in favor of allowing geofence warrants rely significantly on policy arguments, arguing that prohibiting geofence warrants would “frustrate law enforcement’s ability to keep pace against tech-savvy criminals” and otherwise work against public safety in favor of the criminal.[30] They also adopt the legal argument as it was stated in the original hearing’s majority opinion.[31]
The prohibition opinions, however, rely primarily on legal argument rather than policy, and offer reasonings under both the multi-factor test devised in the original dissent and the two-factor general standard, both originating in Carpenter.[32] These opinions rely on the significantly revealing and invasive nature of location history data, and the lack of a truly voluntary provision of data.[33] The dissent further agrees with the analyses in the prohibition opinions, but goes further to hold that the good-faith exclusion does not apply.[34] Ultimately, the result is that the Fourth Circuit is left without a controlling opinion on the subject of geofence warrants, serving as an insular representation of the circuit split the case created, and floating in purgatory until said split is resolved by the same or a higher authority.
This case has been granted certiorari before the Supreme Court of the United States for the singular question of whether the execution of the geofence warrant violated the Fourth Amendment.[35] Oral arguments occurred on April 27, 2026.[36]
[1] U.S. Const. amend. IV.
[2] Id.
[3] Carpenter v. United States, 585 U.S. 296, 304 (2018).
[4] See id. at 304-05 (relying on other cases to emphasize what would be an unreasonable search and seizure at the time of the adoption of the Fourth Amendment to apply it to the surveillance tools and techniques of today); Jones v. United States, 565 U.S. 400, 405-06 (2012) (emphasizing that while the original doctrine was related to physical property it has since evolved to include other aspects of life).
[5] 389 U.S. 347, 361 (1967) (Harlan, J. concurring); see also Smith v. Maryland, 442 U.S. 735, 740 (1979) (solidifying multiple cases that agree with Harlan’s concurrence and establishing the Harlan standard as the doctrine).
[6] See Smith, 442 U.S. at 742-44 (holding that there was no search conducted by the Government when they recorded outgoing calls from an individual’s phone because those calls were voluntarily provided to his phone company); United States v. Miller, 425 U.S. 435, 443 (1976) (holding that there was no search conducted by the Government when they obtained an individual’s bank records because the individual voluntarily provided those records to the bank).
[7] 107 F.4th 319, 325 (4th Cir. 2024).
[8] Id. at 324.
[9] Id.
[10] Id.
[11] Id. at 324-25.
[12] Id. at 322.
[13] Id.
[14] Id.
[15] Id. at 322-23.
[16] Id. at 323.
[17] Id. at 323-24.
[18] Chatrie, 107 F.4th at 325.
[19] United State v. Chatrie, 590 F. Supp. 3d 901, 925-36 (E.D. Va. 2022).
[20] Id. at 937, 941 (quoting United States v. Leon, 468 U.S. 897, 909 (1984)).
[21] Chatrie, 107 F.4th at 321.
[22] Id. at 327-30.
[23] Id. at 328 (quoting Carpenter, 585 U.S. at 311).
[24] Id. at 330-32.
[25] Id. at 344 (Wynn, J. dissenting).
[26] Id. at 346 (Wynn, J. dissenting).
[27] United States v. Chatrie, 136 F.4th 100 (4th Cir. 2025) (en banc).
[28] Id.
[29] Id.
[30] Id. at 110, 112-13 (Wilkinson, J. concurring).
[31] See id. at 130-41 (Richardson, J. concurring) (repeating the same facts, law, and analysis as the former majority but removing the response to the original dissent).
[32] See id. at 120, 148 (Wynn, J. and Berner, J. concurring) (holding respectively that the multi-factor test and the two-factor general standard both prove that geofence warrants are unconstitutional and the warrant was insufficient, but both agreeing that the good-faith exception applies).
[33] Id. at 121, 122-24, 126-27, 149, 152 (Wynn, J. and Berner, J. concurring).
[34] Id. at 157 (Gregory, J. dissenting).
[35] United States v. Chatrie, 136 F4th 100 (4th Cir. 2025), cert. granted, 2026 WL 120676 (U.S. Jan. 16, 2026) (No. 25-112), Petition for a Writ of Certiorari at 2, Chatrie v. United States, No. 25-112 (U.S. Jan. 16 2026), https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/25/25-112/368199/20250728142157250_USSC%20Petition%20for%20Writ%20of%20Certiorari.pdf.
[36] Oral Argument, Chatrie v. United States, (No. 25-112), https://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/audio/2025/25-112.