On March 4, 2025, the Georgia Supreme Court entered the fray over geofence warrants. What is a geofence warrant? It is a way of searching an area for cellphones or other electronic devices during a specific timeframe using either GPS, WIFI, or Bluetooth connections.
The easiest way to understand geofence warrants is to imagine law enforcement drawing a circle around an area and requesting information from a company for every account that shows up in that circle during a particular timeframe.. Previously, the company was usually Google due to the widespread popularity of Google email accounts and apps like Google Maps—although Google has stopped storing the location information used for these type of warrants, other companies have similar capabilities.
Geofence warrants are a relatively new method for law enforcement and, as a result, very few courts have had opportunities to address issues related to these types of warrants. The most notable examples are the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision in United States v. Smith; the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in United States v. Chatrie, and the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals in United States v. Davis. These decisions have taken different approaches and faced different issues, and the Georgia Supreme Court has added another approach.
In Smith, the Fifth Circuit held that geofence warrants in general are unconstitutional because they violate the Fourth Amendment. The Court determined that geofence warrants are the type of general warrants prohibited by the Fourth Amendment because they allow for a “general, exploratory rummaging” that are best characterized as fishing expeditions. The Fifth Circuit focused on the parameters of the search rather than what the search turns up. These warrants require a general search of Google’s database in order to find a more limited subset of data.
The Eleventh Circuit’s decision in Davis dealt mostly with standing issues. The Court found that because the cellphone that was at issue didn’t belong to Davis, his privacy interests weren’t at stake. But the Eleventh Circuit also held that there was no problem with Google having to search its entire database because it is Google’s database.
The Fourth Circuit’s decision in Chatrie focused on whether law enforcement conducted a “Fourth Amendment search” with the geofence warrant. If there is no Fourth Amendment search, a warrant is not required. The Fourth Circuit held that there was no Fourth Amendment search because the information was in Google’s possession and the information at issue was not revealing enough to enhanced protection. This decision, however, has been vacated after the full Fourth Circuit agreed to hear the case en banc—meaning the full court will make a decision rather than a three-judge panel.
Smith takes a middle ground between these approaches. First, it assumes that the geofence information constituted a Fourth Amendment search because it was treated that way by both the State and Smith in the proceedings. This distinguishes it from the approaches taken by the Fourth and Eleventh Circuit’s decision. But, unlike the Fifth Circuit, the Georgia Supreme Court found that the warrant’s satisfied the Fourth Amendment requirements. Specifically, the Court found that the warrants were supported with probable cause and had the required level of particularity.
Unlike the Fifth Circuit, the Georgia Supreme Court was dubious about the importance of Google having to search its entire database for the information sought by the warrant. Like the Eleventh Circuit, the Court held that Smith lacked standing to challenge the search on the basis that it requires searching the entire database because the vast majority of that database doesn’t include her information.
The Court also focused on the fact that these type of warrants involve the search of information in a database, not the search of people or places. The fact that other people’s information would be caught up in the search does not alter the fact that—in the Court’s view—the warrant demonstrated probable cause to conduct the search. This is a similar analysis to that done by the Eleventh Circuit, but taken a step further because it involves reviewing this aspect through the idea of probable cause.
Finally, the Court held that the search warrants were sufficiently particular to comply with the Fourth Amendment. This is the opposite of what the Fifth Circuit decided in Smith. For the Fifth Circuit, the warrant starts as a very general warrant with a unlawfully broad scope that searched the entirety of Google’s database even if it then narrows down its scope with time and place restrictions. For the Georgia Supreme Court, the initial search of Google’s database isn’t the focus. Instead, the focus is on the results of the search when the time and place parameters are applied to Google’s database. For the Georgia Supreme Court, the fact that law enforcement requested information in an area 100 meters wide across a 4 hour time period was the actual search—not the initial search of Google’s entire database.
All of this is to say that these issues are evolving and up in the air. Only a handful of Courts have addressed geofence warrants at this point, but these warrants are going to become more and more prevalent and challenges to the warrants will continue. At some point, the United States Supreme Court will likely have to step in and create a framework for addressing the constitutional requirements of geofence warrants and other types of warrants reliant on modern technology.
