Certiorari Petition to U.S. Supreme Court in 4th Circuit Geofence Decision

Okello Chatrie was convicted of armed robbery based on evidence derived from a geofence warrant. See Chatrie v. U.S., 2025 WL 2173706 (appellant’s certiorari petition).  He asserts:

This case concerns the constitutionality of geofence warrants. For cell phone users to use certain services, their cell phones must continuously transmit their exact locations to their service providers. A geofence warrant allows law enforcement to obtain, from the service provider, the identities of users who were in the vicinity of a particular location at a particular time.

Chatrie’s Brief lays out the problem succinctly: “Geofence warrants are a powerful law enforcement tool. At the same time, they raise significant Fourth Amendment concerns.”

I could offer a guess at an outcome.

• Geofence warrants are too useful and too powerful to be prohibited per se. They have solved serious crimes that otherwise likely would not have been solved. They have proven their value.
• They are also too broad and too invasive to be permitted without clear limits and guardrails. They gather up vast amounts of personal information about people who had nothing to do with any crime. The danger they pose is obvious.

A middle-of-the-road approach seems likely.

As to the predicate, the Chatrie Brief states:

The factual record in this case is also unusually extensive. Google participated in the district court as an amicus, providing detailed information about the technology involved as well as its internal processes. See Dkt. No. 29, Brief of Amicus Curiae Google LLC in Support of Neither Party Concerning Defendant’s Motion to Suppress Evidence from a ‘Geofence’ General Warrant, 2019 WL 8227162. A Google “Location History Manager” submitted three declarations, a Google “Legal Investigations Specialist” submitted another, and both testified live.

In Chatrie, via a warrant served on Google, law enforcement obtained “anonymized location data for every device within 150 meters of the location of a bank robbery within one hour of the robbery.”  Id.

After Google returned an initial list, law enforcement sought-without seeking an additional warrant-information about the movements of certain devices for a longer, two-hour period, and Google complied with that request as well. Then-again without seeking an additional warrant-law enforcement requested de-anonymized subscriber information for three devices. One of those devices belonged to petitioner Okello Chatrie.

Id.  The Fourth Amendment provides: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

Cell phone’s tracking capabilities give rise to the geofence warrant.  The Brief explains: “Geofence warrants seek information regarding devices that were within a particular geographic area during a particular time period. The warrant draws a virtual ‘fence’ around a particular geographic area (hence ‘geofence’) and seeks information about devices within that ‘fence’ during the relevant time period.”

The Brief describes a split of authority, states that the Fourth Circuit judges are “intractably divided,” refers to the Fifth Circuit and State decisions, and adds:

Although Google announced plans to change its internal policies such that it no longer stores location information on its central servers, the state of those plans and the status of its existing data are both unclear,[1] and geofence warrants have been served on other companies as well, including Apple, Lyft, Snapchat, and Uber. This issue is not going away. This Court’s review is needed.

Other authors have noted that similar warrants may implicate everything from e-scooters to Apple air tags.  One article points to surveillance cameras that record information in addition to license plates.[2]

Here, the Chatrie Brief states that the warrant was “for a geofence with a 300-meter diameter– longer than three football fields–drawn over the site of the robbery, encompassing a swath of urban Midlothian and including both the bank and a nearby church.”

The two issues presented are:

1. Whether the execution of the geofence warrant violated the Fourth Amendment.
2. Whether the exclusionary rule should apply to the evidence derived from the geofence warrant.

For additional background, please see:

• En Banc Fourth Circuit Geofence Decision is Splintered – E-Discovery LLC
• New Jersey Decision Permits Geofence Warrants Upon a Proper Predicate – E-Discovery LLC
• Texas Upholds Narrow Geofence Warrant After Melee Resulted in Murder – E-Discovery LLC
• Possible Clarity About Geofence Search Warrants – E-Discovery LLC
• Geofence Search Warrant Held Valid – E-Discovery LLC (Maryland)
• Keeping an Eye on Geofence Warrants – E-Discovery LLC
• Requests for “Tower-Dump” or “Tower-Extraction” Search Warrants Declined Under Geofence Precedent – E-Discovery LLC

 

UPDATE: “This Note argues that geofence warrants, while potentially valuable investigative tools, cannot be reconciled with Fourth Amendment protections without significant constitutional and procedural safeguards. The current circuit split reflects deeper tensions about privacy in the digital age, necessitating a balanced approach. This approach must consider law enforcement’s legitimate investigative needs while establishing meaningful constraints on digital surveillance. ”  R. Abboud, “Digital Fences and Constitutional Defenses: Geofencing and the Fourth Amendment Amid United States v. Smith,” 52 Southern.U.L.Rev. 193 (Spring 2025).

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[1] The Brief states that, although “Google announced that it intended to make this change gradually over the year between 2023 and 2024, petitioner is not aware of any subsequent announcements that the change has been made, detailing how the change affects legacy Google devices, or specifying which data Google continues to collect. Geofence warrants continue to be litigated.”

[2] For more information, please see New Jersey Decision Permits Geofence Warrants Upon a Proper Predicate – E-Discovery LLC.  Additionally, any precedent may apply to “tower dumps.”  Requests for “Tower-Dump” or “Tower-Extraction” Search Warrants Declined Under Geofence Precedent – E-Discovery LLC