The Privacy of Physical Movement: Chatrie v. United States

This episode presents the United States Supreme Court’s 2026 decision in Chatrie v. United States, a landmark case concerning the constitutionality of geofence warrants. The Court ruled that law enforcement conducts a Fourth Amendment search when it acquires a person's Location History data from private companies like Google, as individuals maintain a reasonable expectation of privacy regarding their physical movements. Justice Kagan's majority opinion argues that this digital tracking provides an intimate window into a person’s life, comparable to the cell-site data protected in the earlier Carpenter ruling. While the Court established that such data collection requires constitutional oversight, it remanded the case to determine if the specific multi-step warrant used to identify Chatrie for a bank robbery was sufficiently particular and supported by probable cause. Separate opinions reflect deep judicial divisions, with some justices advocating for a property-based approach to digital effects, while dissenters criticized the ruling as an advisory opinion regarding an obsolete technology.