The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Monday that law enforcement searches for the location history of cellphones near crime scenes are covered by the Fourth Amendment, requiring warrants to obtain the data.

But the high court left unsettled when searches for the information are reasonable — likely meaning the justices will eventually weigh in again on the privacy rights of Americans in the electronic era.

In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court ruled that police officers conducted a search for the purposes of the Fourth Amendment when they obtained cellphone location history data during an investigation into a bank robbery in Virginia. The amendment protects against unreasonable searches and seizures by the government.

“An individual has a reasonable expectation of privacy in records about his cell phone’s location, and police intrude on that constitutionally protected interest when they demand the information — even though for only a limited time, and from a third-party tech company,” Justice Elena Kagan wrote in the majority opinion.

Kagan was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Brett Kavanaugh and Kentanji Brown Jackson. Justice Neil Gorsuch concurred in the judgment but did not join the majority opinion.

Justice Samuel Alito dissented, joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Amy Coney Barrett.

States ask warrants be upheld

Over the past two decades, geofence warrants have become a major tool of law enforcement. At a basic level, they allow police to identify phones within a geographic area for a certain period of time. The data can be tremendously valuable to investigators, offering a way to develop suspects in crimes where their identities aren’t otherwise known. 

Civil liberties advocates warned that geofence warrants ensnare people in digital dragnets, handing the government data on anyone who happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. They argued that accessing data on anyone within a certain area — the geofence — amounts to a general warrant prohibited by the Constitution.

A broad bipartisan coalition of states urged the justices to uphold the warrants. Thirty-one states and the District of Columbia filed a brief with the court arguing that geofence warrants can be more precise than many traditional investigative methods when supported by probable cause and appropriately tailored. In the brief, they urged the justices not to prohibit geofence warrants altogether.

Geofence warrants can generate critical leads when the perpetrators of crimes are otherwise unknown, they wrote. When suspects are unknown but the suspected wrongdoing is linked to a specific place and time, location data provides one of the narrowest available tools for finding leads, the brief argues.

Credit union robbery in Virginia

The case centered on a 2019 robbery of a federal credit union in Midlothian, Virginia. Okello Chatrie was convicted of armed robbery after surveillance footage showed the robber using a cellphone. A detective then obtained a geofence warrant directed at Google for devices within 150 meters of the credit union within an hour of the robbery.

Google initially provided anonymized data in response to the warrant. The detective then requested and received additional location data on nine users. Finally, the detective received de-anonymized information on three users, without obtaining an additional warrant.

While Google has since changed the way it stores location history data to limit geofence warrants, other apps and tech firms collect the data. Lawyers for Chatrie argued that geofence warrants open the door to the authorities requesting information on everyone at a sensitive location — perhaps an abortion clinic or a political convention — at a particular time.

The records serve as a “personal journal of a user’s movements,” Kagan wrote. Location history resembles other private materials like emails, documents, photos and calendars that, even if stored on Google’s servers, users reasonably view as their own, she wrote. Users, in turn, expect the data to be shielded from the “inquisitive eyes” of the government, Kagan wrote.

‘Reasonable’ question unanswered

But Kagan and the court’s majority didn’t wade into whether the search of Chatrie was reasonable under the Fourth Amendment. While the warrant in the case was an uncommon, multi-step warrant, Kagan wrote, the lower appeals court found that a search did not occur, so it did not decide whether the warrant was reasonable.

“We are, as we have said many times before, ‘a court of review, not of first view,’” Kagan wrote. “It is therefore now up to the Court of Appeals to decide whether, at each step of the search process, the warrant satisfied the Fourth Amendment’s requirements of particularity and probable cause.”

In his dissent, Alito wrote that the Supreme Court’s decision “further destabilizes” longstanding jurisprudence on the Fourth Amendment. He accused the majority of issuing an advisory opinion by not addressing whether the search of Chatrie’s data was reasonable.

“Indeed, by refusing to review the one question that could have at least theoretically given Chatrie some hope of relief, the Court carefully set the stage for its planned performance: striking a pose as a great champion of privacy in the digital age. I cannot support this irresponsible escapade,” Alito wrote.

Madison’s Black community more than a century ago was concentrated in a neighborhood just blocks from the Capitol, where business owners, church leaders and civil rights advocates built institutions that helped shape the city.

On Thursday evening, participants in a Wisconsin Historical Society walking tour retraced that history, stopping at homes and businesses tied to Black Madisonians.

A group of about 12 Wisconsinites gathered on the corner of E. Dayton and N. Blount Street, near a white house that belongs to the Hill family early Thursday evening. 

Jenny Peterson of the Historical Society led the tour.

“We know from Census records and data that African-Americans have lived in the county as long as Europeans have since before the Civil War,” Peterson said. Dane County’s early Black residents included free and enslaved individuals. “There were African-American men, women and children that were settled in the community and after the Civil War, they experienced many of the increasing freedoms.” 

In 1910, there were about 143 Black people residing in Madison and Peterson said that 19 out of the 39 Black households in Madison lived in the neighborhood near East Dayton Street. 

Peterson said that area of town was accessible for Black families looking to establish themselves in Madison. 

The water in the area was swampy,  Peterson said. “The prices were a little bit cheaper,” which made it possible for African-American families and other groups with few resources to settle the area. 

John and Amanda Hill moved to Madison from Atlanta in 1910 and bought a grocery store on Dayton Street that served the neighborhood for generations. A sign for the store still hangs in the building’s window.

“In addition to running the store, John was also appointed to several city committees, including the committee on minority housing and the advisory committee, which encouraged citizen participation in community improvement projects,” Peterson said. 

Throughout the tour, Peterson passed around photos of the Black Madisonians whose lives she described and pictures of the places as they used to look. 

“We have this photo of [John] standing in front of the store with his businesswear on and for the audience, it creates a moment where all of these connections are made,” Peterson said. “You’re like, OK, this helps me imagine what this would have been like in 1915 as community members are going in and out of this business, John is talking to his customers, asking them how their day was… It brings it to life.” 

A yellow and blue house next door was the home of William and Anna Mae Miller.

William Miller, who was from Kentucky and studied law, faced discrimination that prevented him from becoming a practicing lawyer. He moved to Milwaukee with his wife and worked as a waiter until he met Wisconsin Gov. Robert M. La Follette, who took him on as an aide. 

Miller went on to help found the St. Paul African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church in the community in 1902. He and Anna Mae also helped establish the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

Peterson noted that the family owned multiple buildings and rented out rooms to other Black people who needed a place to stay as there weren’t many places in Madison that were open to Black people. 

Peterson also noted that William Miller tried to help save documents from the state Capitol building when it caught on fire in February 1904. 

“He was one of those brave individuals who went up to the Capitol to do what he could to save documents to save materials from the Capitol on that cold night,” she said. 

Two books served as the starting research for the Madison Black History walking tour: “Settlin’: Stories of Madison’s Early African American Families,” by Muriel Simms and “Make Way for Liberty: Wisconsin African Americans in the Civil War,” by Jeff Kannel. 

Peterson also pulled out Settlin’ throughout the tour, using photos from the book to illustrate the stories she shared including one of Leo Vinton Butts, the first Black man to play in a University of Wisconsin-Madison football game. His father, Benjamin Butts, was enslaved as a child in Virginia before moving to Wisconsin after the Civil War at age 11, and the home where the elder Butts raised eight children is also a stop on the tour.

“At the height of the Civil War, he reportedly hung around the camp,” Peterson said, of the 5th Independent Battery Wisconsin Light Artillery, which was stationed in Virginia. Butts “started helping out with different tasks and responsibilities and chores, became very well beloved by and well regarded by the soldiers in the unit, and when the regiment decided to return home to Wisconsin following the war, Butts decided to follow.”

Peterson said he worked as a clerk and porter before securing a job at a barber shop, which she said was among the few jobs that African-Americans could access at the time. Butts then bought his own barber shop on the Capitol Square where he made connections, including with Gov. La Follette. 

“By 1895, Butts was an established and influential leader within the Madison African-American community,” Peterson said. 

Renee Moe, the CEO of United Way of Dane County, who joined the tour, she had wanted to attend for several years.

“So many of the issues that all of us are facing today in our communities, in our country and our world, have deep historic roots. And the more we can understand about our communities and build relationships with those stories and with each other, I think the better context we have to actually work together to improve the quality of life for everyone.” 

Moe said she was struck by how geography and housing has shifted since the 1800s. Most of the neighborhood on the tour is made up of student housing these days. She said she remembered that “there used to be some nonprofits there, like Access Community Health, and Urban League, and they’ve moved to the south side or to the east side.”

The tour ended outside of the state Capitol by the statue of Vel Phillips, the former Secretary of State who was the first Black statewide official in Wisconsin and the first Black judge in the state  and who worked to fight against racially restrictive housing covenants. The statue honoring her outside the Capitol was unveiled in 2024.

“Vel Phillips’ work was talking about housing access and fair housing practices,” Moe said. “Today we’re still working on housing access and affordability, so that’s what struck me was how neighborhoods shift, how wealth and opportunities shift over generations, and the fact that we need to stay committed to making sure that all community members and neighbors have access to that opportunity to rise.” 

Peterson, who was born and raised in Madison and has worked for the Historical Society for two years, said she has learned a lot of history that she didn’t previously know from conducting the tour. 

“The people that are part of this tour, and the families that they created, and the community institutions that they created, and the businesses that were part of this neighborhood, like this thriving space, the complexity and the nuance of that — I didn’t know about,” she said. “I also have felt very grateful to be able to learn and take this in and continue to ask questions about it.”

The Madison Black History walking tour is just one of the walking tours that the Wisconsin Historical Society offers. Recent additions include  an LGBTQ+ history tour and a “Democracy in Action” tour, added for the 250th anniversary of the United States.

“What’s important is making sure we share these stories now, and that we continue to ask questions, so that we can learn more about these people and their contributions to Madison’s history,” Peterson said.