Supreme Court restricts use of geofence warrants
Accessibility links
- Keyboard shortcuts for audio player
****Play Live Radio****
- **Hourly News**
- **Listen Live**
- **My Playlist**
- Open Navigation Menu
- 
- Sign InPersonalize Your Experience
- NPR Shop
- Get NPR+
* Donate
Close Navigation Menu
- Home
- NewsExpand/collapse submenu for News
- National
- World
- Politics
- Business
- Health
- Science
- Climate
- Race
- CultureExpand/collapse submenu for Culture
- Books
- Movies
- Food
- Life Kit
- Gaming
- MusicExpand/collapse submenu for Music
- Podcasts & ShowsExpand/collapse submenu for Podcasts & Shows
Daily
- 
- 
- 
- 
- 
- 
- 
Featured
- 
- 
- 
- 
- 
- 
- Search
- NPR Shop
- Get NPR+
- Sign InPersonalize Your Experience
- 
- Support
- Careers
- Press
- Ethics
**Supreme Court restricts use of geofence warrants****Writing for the 6-3 majority, Justice Elena Kagan said that the technique, known as geofencing, violates the Fourth Amendment's prohibition against unreasonable searches.**
[](https://www.npr.org/2026/06/29/nx-s1-5844697/supreme-court-restricts-use-of-geofence-warrants)
Law
Supreme Court restricts use of geofence warrants
June 29, 2026 10:50 AM ET
By
,
!Image 20: The U.S. Supreme Court
The U.S. Supreme Court **Al Drago/Getty Images******hide caption****
****toggle caption****
Al Drago/Getty Images
The Supreme Court on Thursday restricted the use of a relatively new law enforcement technique that allows police to tap into giant tech-firm databases to see who was near the scene of a crime.
Writing for the 6-3 majority, Justice Elena Kagan said that the technique, known as geofencing, sent the case back to a lower court to determine whether the search was "reasonable" under the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution.
"The Fourth Amendment must, as ever, protect against unjustified government intrusion on the privacy of the individual," she wrote.
Justice Samuel Alito, in his dissent, called the court's opinion an "irresponsible escapade" and accused the court's majority of "striking a pose as a great champion of privacy in the digital age."
Sponsor Message
A "geofence warrant" entails drawing a virtual fence around a geographic area where a crime was committed. The government can then seek a warrant to require a tech company to search its data to identify any of its users who were within the geofence at the time of the crime.
This case stems from a robbery in the suburbs of Richmond, Va. A man stole $195,000 from a bank, but after two months, the case had gone cold. That is, until detectives served a warrant on Google, asking for the location information of cellphone users in and around the bank for the hour before and after the crime was committed.
Complying with the warrant, Google initially found the names of 19 people who were in or near the bank, but Google pushed back, ultimately providing the police with the names of just three people whose location data showed they were at the bank. When police went to the home of one of them, they found a pistol matching one seen on security camera footage of the robbery and nearly $100,000 in cash. That man, Okello Chatrie, later confessed and was convicted of the crime.
His attorneys argued in filings to the court that geofence searches violate the Fourth Amendment because they allow the government "to search first and develop suspicions later." The geofence warrants in this case directed Google to search millions of users' location histories, meaning that millions of people were subjected to a search despite never having done anything suspicious.
Sponsor Message
But the government argued in its filings that because people can choose not to give companies like Google their location data, that data is not constitutionally protected.
##### Correction June 29, 2026
A previous version of this story incorrectly said the Supreme Court's majority found that the law enforcement technique known as geofencing violated the Fourth Amendment's prohibition against unreasonable searches. In fact, the justices sent the case back to a lower court to determine whether the search was "reasonable" under the Fourth Amendment.
- **Facebook**
- **Flipboard**
- **Email**
More Stories From NPR
##### Law
#### What the Supreme Court did on the final day of its term
##### Law
#### Editor's note: NPR retracts Justice Samuel Alito story
##### Law
#### Supreme Court upholds birthright citizenship on constitutional grounds
##### Law
#### Supreme Court strikes down limits on political party spending
##### Law
#### Supreme Court upholds bans on transgender athletes participating in women and girls' sports
##### Immigration
#### Inside the coordinated strategy to radically reshape U.S. immigration
Sponsor Message
Popular on NPR.org
[](https://www.npr.org/2026/07/01/nx-s1-5876122/colorado-primary-election-melat-kiros-democratic-socialist)
##### Politics
#### Democratic socialist Melat Kiros poised to become the first Gen Z woman in Congress
[](https://www.npr.org/2026/06/30/nx-s1-5876301/peptides-fda-panel-compounding-rfk)
##### Health
#### FDA scientists flag concerns with peptides, the trendy molecules RFK Jr. supports
##### Newsletter
#### NPR retracts story about Alito retirement
[](https://www.npr.org/2026/06/30/nx-s1-5862777/how-to-spend-less-money-restaurants-takeout)
##### Life Kit
#### Tricks to help you spend less money at restaurants
[](https://www.npr.org/2026/06/30/nx-s1-5875287/venezuela-deportees-us-quakes)
##### Immigration
#### Venezuelans deported from the U.S. were killed hours later in powerful quakes
[](https://www.npr.org/2026/06/30/nx-s1-5866810/us-murder-rate-record-low-crime-homicide)
##### National
#### U.S. murder rate approaches a record low
NPR Editors' Picks
[](https://www.npr.org/2026/06/30/nx-s1-5875468/meta-kalshi-prediction-market-acquisition-talks)
##### Technology
#### Meta considered buying Kalshi before developing its own prediction market app
##### Weather
#### It's going to be a hot July Fourth for much of the country
##### Politics
#### Rep. Tom Kean returns to Congress, says depression is why he went missing for months
##### Book Reviews
#### 'Dead but Dreaming of Electric Sheep' is full of beautifully written grotesqueries
[](https://www.npr.org/2026/06/30/nx-s1-5875206/trumps-cuts-science-researchers-move-abroad)
##### Health
#### After Trump's reelection, these U.S. scientists found jobs in the U.K.
##### Elections
#### Here are Colorado's 2026 primary election results
###### Read & Listen
- Home
- News
- Culture
- Music
###### Connect
- Press
###### About NPR
- Overview
- Ethics
- Finances
###### Get Involved
- NPR Shop
- Privacy
- © 2026 npr
Sponsor Message
Sponsor Message
!Image 39: NPR Plus logo ##### Exclusive benefits
###### Give a little. Get a lot.
Support mission-driven journalism while getting something great in return. Enjoy bonus content, early access and sponsor-free listening from your favorite NPR podcasts.
Already have NPR+?Sign In
Close modal
Cookie Settings
When you visit our website or app, we store cookies on your browser, use similar tracking and storage technologies such as software development kits, and use information about the device you use to access our site or app (together "cookies"). The information these cookies collect might relate to you, your preferences or your device, and is mostly used to make the site or app work as you expect them to and to provide a more personalized web or app experience. However, you can choose not to allow certain types of cookies, which may impact your experience of the site, app, and the services we are able to offer. Click on the different category headings to find out more and change our default settings according to your preference. You may opt out of the sharing of your information with our sponsorship vendors for delivery of personalized sponsorship credits and marketing messages on our website or third-party sites by turning off "Share Data for Targeted Sponsorship" below. If you opt out, our service providers or vendors may continue to serve you non-personalized, non-"interest-based" sponsorship credits and marketing messages on our website or app or third-party sites or apps, and those sponsorship credits and marketing message may come with cookies that are used to control how often you encounter those credits and messages, to prevent fraud, and to do aggregate reporting. You cannot opt-out of our First Party Strictly Necessary Cookies as they are deployed in order to ensure the proper functioning of our website or app (such as prompting the cookie banner and remembering your settings, to log into your account, to redirect you when you log out, etc.). For more information about the First and Third Party Cookies used please follow this link.
Allow All
Manage Consent Preferences
#### Strictly Necessary or Essential Cookies
Always Active
These cookies are essential to provide you with services available through the NPR Services and to enable you to use some of their features. For example, these cookies allow NPR to remember your registration information while you are logged in. Local station customization, the NPR Shop, and other interactive features also use cookies. Without these cookies, the services that you have asked for cannot be provided, and we only use these cookies to provide you with those services.
#### Share Data for Targeted Sponsorship
- [x] Share Data for Targeted Sponsorship
You may opt out of the sharing of your information with our sponsorship vendors for delivery of personalized sponsorship credits and marketing messages on our website or third-party sites by turning off "Share Data for Targeted Sponsorship." If you opt out, our service providers or vendors may continue to serve you non-personalized, non-"interest-based" sponsorship credits and marketing messages on our website or third-party sites, and those sponsorship credits and marketing message may come with cookies that are used to control how often you encounter those credits and messages, to prevent fraud, and to do aggregate reporting.
- ##### Performance and Analytics Cookies
- [x] Switch Label
These cookies are used to collect information about traffic to our Services and how users interact with the NPR Services. The information collected includes the number of visitors to the NPR Services, the websites that referred visitors to the NPR Services, the pages that they visited on the NPR Services, what time of day they visited the NPR Services, whether they have visited the NPR Services before, and other similar information. We use this information to help operate the NPR Services more efficiently, to gather broad demographic information and to monitor the level of activity on the NPR Services.
- ##### Functional Cookies
- [x] Switch Label
These cookies allow our Services to remember choices you make when you use them, such as remembering your Member station preferences and remembering your account details. The purpose of these cookies is to provide you with a more personal experience and to prevent you from having to re-enter your preferences every time you visit the NPR Services.
- ##### Targeting and Sponsor Cookies
- [x] Switch Label
These cookies track your browsing habits or other information, such as location, to enable us to show sponsorship credits which are more likely to be of interest to you. These cookies use information about your browsing history to group you with other users who have similar interests. Based on that information, and with our permission, we and our sponsors can place cookies to enable us or our sponsors to show sponsorship credits and other messages that we think will be relevant to your interests while you are using third-party services.
Cookie List
Clear
- - [x] checkbox label label
Apply Cancel
Consent Leg.Interest
- [x] checkbox label label
- [x] checkbox label label
- [x] checkbox label label
Confirm My Choices
