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A Few Thoughts on the Chatrie Oral Argument

On the whole, a good morning for the government.

Orin S. Kerr | 4.27.2026 1:04 PM

The Supreme Court held oral argument this morning in Chatrie v. United States, the geofence warrant case.  I live-tweeted the two-hour argument over at both X and Bluesky, and click the links there to see the play-by-play.  For those wanting the big picture, here are my initial thoughts right after the argument:

(1) The most important takeaway is that the Justices seem likely to reject the broader arguments Chatrie made that geofence warrants are categorically unconstitutional or cannot be drafted in ways that could identify suspects. They seem likely to rule that geofence warrants can be drafted constitutionally, rejecting the 5th Circuit's view in Smith.  I suspect they will likely hold that geofence warrants have to be limited in time and space, and leave the details to lower courts. There were some Justices who wanted to address the multi-step process of Google's warrant procedure and say new warrants were needed for those steps—that was the view, if I recall correctly, suggested by Justices Sotomayor and Jackson. But I don't know if the majority will get that far.

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