Fifth Circuit Rules Geofence Warrants Unconstitutional in Landmark Decision

On August 9, 2024, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit held in United States v. Smith that the geofence-warrant process before it violated the Fourth Amendment’s ban on general warrants. The court nevertheless upheld the convictions under the good-faith exception. This article explains that decision and the Supreme Court’s later ruling in Chatrie.

What are Geofence Warrants?

Geofence warrants seek location records associated with devices within a defined area during a specified period. In Smith, investigators sought records from Google’s Sensorvault database, which held data from users who had enabled Location History. The results did not cover every phone or person in the area.

Before courts began addressing the constitutional limits of this technology, police use of geofence warrants had already raised serious concerns because these requests can sweep in location data from innocent people who simply happened to be near a crime scene.

Geofence warrants are part of a broader category of digital dragnet searches. Similar privacy concerns arise with keyword search warrants, where law enforcement seeks information about people who searched for particular words or phrases online.

The Case at Hand

The case stems from a 2018 robbery of a U.S. Postal Service employee in Mississippi. Unable to identify suspects through traditional means, investigators obtained a geofence warrant for the area around the crime scene. This led to the identification and eventual conviction of three defendants: Jamarr Smith, Thomas Iroko Ayodele, and Gilbert McThunel II.

The Court’s Ruling

In a unanimous decision, the Fifth Circuit panel held that:

  1. Individuals have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their Google Location History data.
  2. Geofence warrants constitute a “search” under the Fourth Amendment.
  3. The geofence-warrant process used in this case amounted to an unconstitutional general warrant.

Despite finding a constitutional violation, the court upheld the convictions under the good-faith exception because the officers reasonably relied on the warrant. This distinction matters when seeking to exclude evidence through a motion to suppress: a Fourth Amendment violation does not always require suppression.

Key Points from the Opinion

The court’s opinion, authored by Judge King, made several important observations:

  • Privacy Expectations: The court found that the precision and comprehensive nature of Google Location History data creates a reasonable expectation of privacy, even for short time periods.
  • Third-Party Doctrine: The court rejected the application of the third-party doctrine, which typically holds that information voluntarily shared with third parties loses Fourth Amendment protection. The opinion noted that the “voluntary” nature of sharing location data with Google is questionable, given how the opt-in process works.
  • General Warrants: The court likened geofence warrants to the “general warrants” that the Fourth Amendment was specifically designed to prohibit. These warrants allow law enforcement to search through massive amounts of data without identifying specific suspects or demonstrating probable cause for each individual whose data is searched.
  • Later developments: The Fourth Circuit’s original Chatrie panel took a different view of privacy in Google Location History data. That case later reached the Supreme Court, which addressed the search issue in June 2026, as explained below.

Implications and Future Outlook

On June 29, 2026, the Supreme Court held in Chatrie v. United States that police conducted a Fourth Amendment search when they obtained the defendant’s Google location data. The Court sent the case back for review of whether the warrant met probable-cause and particularity requirements at each stage. It did not hold that every geofence warrant is unconstitutional or decide whether the evidence must be excluded.

Google’s Recent Changes and the Ruling’s Significance

Google has changed how it stores Maps Timeline, formerly called Location History. Timeline data is now stored on users’ devices, with an option to save an encrypted backup on Google’s servers. Our article on Google’s changes affecting geofence warrants explains the shift away from the central database used in cases such as Smith.

These storage changes affect the data available to investigators. They do not resolve challenges to evidence already obtained through geofence warrants.

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