Supreme Court Victory: ACLJ Helps Secure Major Protection Against Government Location Tracking

On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a significant Fourth Amendment victory in Chatrie v. United States, ruling that the government conducts a constitutional search when it obtains a person’s historical location data through a geofence warrant. The Court recognized a simple but critical principle: Americans do not lose constitutional protection merely because modern technology stores their information on a company’s servers.

We have warned that geofence warrants give the government unprecedented power to identify and track individuals who are not suspected of wrongdoing. Instead of starting with a suspect and gathering evidence, the government can start with a location and then work backward to discover who was there. These were some of the arguments that we presented in our amicus brief to protect Americans’ privacy.

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Why Every American Should Care

This case was never just about one robbery investigation.

The practical reality of geofence warrants is that they allow the government to identify everyone who was present within a particular area during a specified period of time. That could be a crime scene. But it could also be a church. A political rally. A pro-life event. A gun-rights gathering. A legislative meeting. A protest. A campaign headquarters. Or any other place where Americans exercise their constitutional freedoms.

That is precisely what makes these warrants so dangerous.

As the Supreme Court recognized, modern location-history data can reveal an extraordinarily detailed picture of a person’s life. It can expose where people travel, whom they associate with, what organizations they support, where they worship, and countless other deeply personal details. The Constitution was designed to prevent this kind of unchecked government power.

The concerns we raised in Chatrie did not arise in a vacuum. For example, through our efforts to expose the Arctic Frost scandal, the ACLJ has been confronting a broader and increasingly troubling trend: the expansion of government surveillance powers into areas involving political activity, ideological viewpoints, and constitutionally protected conduct.

As publicly reported, Arctic Frost involved the collection of records relating to conservative organizations, political figures, and even Members of Congress. The ACLJ has filed Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests and litigation seeking answers regarding the scope of that surveillance and the government’s acquisition of sensitive communications and records.

The principle at stake in both cases is fundamentally the same.

When government obtains the power to collect vast amounts of digital information, the danger is not limited to criminal investigations. Surveillance tools rarely remain confined to their original purpose. Powers created to investigate one category of conduct inevitably tempt officials to expand their use.

That is why constitutional safeguards are so important.

Whether the target is a defendant, a political activist, a pastor, a journalist, a donor, a concerned parent, or even a sitting United States Senator, constitutional rights cannot depend on the government’s assurances that it will exercise restraint.

The ACLJ’s Arguments Were Reflected in the Opinions

The ACLJ’s amicus brief urged the Court to return to the text of the Fourth Amendment and recognize that Americans maintain constitutional protection for their digital information even when that information is stored by a third party. We argued that location history data should not simply be treated as Google’s business records. Users maintain control over that information. They can review it, edit it, export it, and delete it. The government should not be able to bypass constitutional protections simply because technology companies store information on remote servers.

While the Court’s majority opinion relied principally on existing privacy precedents, Justice Neil Gorsuch’s concurrence focused on many of the same themes the ACLJ emphasized.

Justice Gorsuch argued that courts should return to the Constitution’s text and ask whether digital information constitutes an individual’s protected “papers” or “effects.” He emphasized that Google itself describes location history as the user’s information and highlighted the user’s ability to review, edit, export, and delete the data. He further stressed that entrusting information to another party for limited purposes does not automatically deprive an individual of his protected interest in that information.

Today’s decision represents a major step forward, but the battle over geofence warrants is far from finished.

The Supreme Court sent the case back to the lower courts to determine whether the particular warrant used in this case satisfied the Constitution’s requirements of probable cause and particularity. The Court expressly left those issues unresolved.

But most importantly, the Supreme Court delivered an important message: Americans do not surrender their constitutional protections simply because they participate in modern life. The ACLJ was proud to argue before the Supreme Court and defend that principle. We will continue fighting to ensure that government surveillance powers remain subject to constitutional limits and that freedom-loving Americans never have to choose between using modern technology and preserving their fundamental rights.

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