The Law School’s Jenner & Block Supreme Court and Appellate Clinic helped secure a landmark win in Chatrie v. United States, a US Supreme Court case holding that a person has a reasonable expectation of privacy in their cell phone location data stored in the cloud. The clinic was co-counsel for petitioner Okello Chatrie. 

Specifically, the Court examined whether “geofence warrants” requiring technology companies to hand over individuals’ geolocation data are searches subject to Fourth Amendment protections. In a 6-3 ruling, the Supreme Court found that they are—remanding the case to a lower court to determine whether the search satisfied the Fourth Amendment’s probable cause and other requirements.

Investigators typically use geofence warrants to identify unknown suspects at the scene of a crime. They do this by defining a geographic area and time window and requesting tech companies to reveal cell phone location data that can help pinpoint who was present within the “geofence” at the time of the crime.

In Chatrie’s case, law enforcement served Google a geofence warrant following a 2019 armed bank robbery in Virginia. The data obtained using the warrant led officers to Chatrie, who was subsequently charged with the crime. 

The Court’s opinion, released on June 29, marked a significant precedent in constitutional law. It affirmed that individuals retain a reasonable expectation of privacy in their cell phone location history and rejected the argument that users forfeit their privacy simply by using location-sharing services. As the Court explained, while the technologies at issue in this case are new, “the Fourth Amendment must, as ever, protect against unjustified governmental intrusion on the privacy of the individual.”

The team representing Chatrie was led by the clinic’s partners at Jenner & Block. Jenner partner Adam Unikowsky was lead counsel and argued the case in the Supreme Court. Law School students worked alongside the Jenner team, and with Gerald Ratner Distinguished Service Professor David Strauss and Clinical Professor Sarah Konsky, on the case. 

“Our clinic was honored to be part of the team representing Mr. Chatrie in this case,” Konsky said. “This is an important development in Fourth Amendment law. The case challenged our students to work through the application of Fourth Amendment principles to a modern technology, and they rose to that challenge. I was really impressed by their work.”