Supreme Court Limits Police Access to Google Location History Under the Fourth Amendment

The US Supreme Court has ruled that police must perform a Fourth Amendment search when obtaining detailed Google Location History records, rejecting the argument that individuals automatically lose constitutional privacy protections when location data is held by a technology company.

The decision, issued on June 29, 2026, in the case of Chatrie v. United States, arose from a geofence warrant used to identify suspects after a $195,000 credit union robbery in Midlothian, Virginia in May 2019.

Police did not begin with the name of a suspect but instead asked Google for information about devices found within a defined geographic area around the crime scene. The requested geofence covered a 150-meter radius around the building.