Supreme Court to hear case on phone location warrants used to catch bank robber [View all]

Source: The Independent

Saturday 25 April 2026 11:56 EDT


The Supreme Court is poised to rule on a critical digital privacy issue: whether geofence warrants, a powerful police tool, violate the Fourth Amendment's ban on unreasonable searches.

This legal challenge stems from cases like Okello Chatrie's, who stole $195,000 from a bank in suburban Richmond, Virginia. He eluded police until a geofence warrant compelled Google to provide location histories of devices within a virtual perimeter near the crime scene, identifying his phone among a handful of others.

The high court's decision will be the latest attempt to apply a 1791 constitutional provision to technologies unimaginable to its founders. Chatrie's appeal is one of two cases being argued Monday. The other is an effort by Bayer to have the court block thousands of state lawsuits alleging the global agrochemical manufacturer failed to warn people that its popular Roundup weedkiller could cause cancer.

Geofence warrants turn the usual way of pursuing suspects on its head. Typically, police identify a suspect and then obtain a warrant to search a home or a phone. With geofence warrants, police do not have a suspect, only a location where a crime took place. They work in reverse to identify people who were in the area.

Read more: https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/supreme-court-geofence-warrants-okello-chatrie-b2964912.html