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Cardozo Law Review

Abstract

Since 2016, Google has received thousands of geofence warrant requests from law enforcement, requesting Google to scan through its vast database of users to identify who and what devices entered into, or exited out of, a set of coordinates in a specified period of time. Several cases began making their way through the federal courts to delineate the legality of such warrants—with challenges spanning the vast amount of data they search, their relative accuracy, and whether they comported with the Fourth Amendment. Then, in the summer of 2024, two federal appellate courts handed down decisions just weeks apart: the Fourth Circuit in United States v. Chatrie, and the Fifth Circuit in United States v. Smith. The two courts reached opposite conclusions. The Fourth Circuit held that geofence warrants were not searches at all due to the third-party doctrine. The Fifth Circuit held that geofence warrants were likely always unconstitutional as general warrants. The Supreme Court granted certiorari to Chatrie, and denied certiorari to Smith.

This circuit split and the now-pending Supreme Court case have raised several questions about how Fourth Amendment jurisprudence fares in the era of modern technology. However, given the Supreme Court’s history, this Note operates under the assumption that a decision in Chatrie may not clear up the Fourth Amendment fog as much as anticipated. Even a decision holding the Chatrie warrant unconstitutional may not result in fortified Fourth Amendment protection, given the prevalence of the exceptions to the exclusionary rule. As such, this Note evaluates the current landscape of Fourth Amendment jurisprudence in federal courts and proposes that, at least for now, adherence to the principles of evidence law may provide threshold protections that have become functionally diluted within the Fourth Amendment.

Disciplines

Criminal Procedure | Fourth Amendment

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