Last year, we wrote about a constitutional challenge bubbling up in the Fourth Circuit relating to "geofence warrants," which require production of location data showing whether a cell phone was near the scene of a crime at the time of the crime. At issue is whether executing such a warrant violates the Fourth Amendment. And, as we discussed, the Fourth Circuit could not agree on an answer, with the en banc panel in United States v. Chatrie issuing a one-sentence per curiam affirmance with nine different opinions.
Now the Supreme Court has stepped in, granting certiorari on the geofence warrant question to resolve the split between the Fourth Circuit's fractured view of geofence warrants, which left Chatrie without relief, and the Fifth Circuit's holding that geofences are unconstitutional general searches.
Okello Chatrie, the criminal defendant convicted of bank robbery on evidence that his phone was in the vicinity of the bank at the time of the crime, asked the Supreme Court to decide both whether geofence warrants violate the Fourth Amendment's prohibition on unreasonable searches and seizures and whether the exclusionary rule should apply to evidence obtained from such warrants. On the latter issue, which the Court declined to review, the defendant sought clarity on one Fourth Circuit opinion taking criminal procedure to its root, declining to apply the customary rule excluding evidence obtained in violation of the Constitution to geofence warrants, even if they were unconstitutional.
By limiting its consideration to the first question only, the Court will be tasked with deciding which Court of Appeals has it right: the Fourth Circuit, where 14 judges agreed either that geofence warrants are not subject to the Fourth Amendment or that the evidence derived from the warrant was rightfully admitted in Chatrie's prosecution (only Judge Gregory would have held that geofences constitute a search and that the evidence should be suppressed), or the Fifth Circuit, which held in 2024 that geofence warrants are unconstitutional general warrants because they are not sufficiently particularized to the individual defendant.
The Court will receive briefs from the parties in the months ahead, with argument likely sometime this spring. The case will doubtless generate significant interest from amici nationwide, given the intersection of data privacy, criminal defense, and government power.
