On June 29, 2026, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that law enforcement officers invade a cell phone user’s reasonable expectation of privacy when they access historical location data through what is referred to as a Google “geofence” warrant.
These “warrants” utilized a three-step protocol developed by Google and law enforcement to narrow down suspects. In the case before the U.S. Supreme Court, for step one, Google produced anonymized location data for all cell phones within the geofence during a one-hour window surrounding the robbery. At step two, officers narrowed the list to nine devices, prompting Google to provide an extended two-hour log of those users’ movements both inside and outside the geofence. At step three, police narrowed the list to three users, and Google turned over their personal identifying information, including names and phone numbers.
The Supreme Court held that tracking a person’s physical movements via commercial location databases constitutes a search under the Fourth Amendment, even if the data covers a brief period or is held by a third-party technology company. Important in the discussion is that the U.S. Supreme Court did not rule on whether the specific warrant used against the defendant was ultimately valid. Rather, the Court remanded the case, leaving it to the lower court to determine whether the multi-step “warrant” satisfied the Fourth Amendment’s requirements of particularity and probable cause at each stage of the search.
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