Supreme Court grants certiorari to decide constitutionality of geofence warrants

The Supreme Court agrees to hear a case challenging the constitutionality of geofence warrants — law enforcement demands for location data on every person whose cellphone was near a crime scene. The case arrives after a circuit split: the Fourth Circuit upheld a geofence warrant in a bank robbery case while the Fifth Circuit struck one down as an unconstitutional general warrant. The Court's ruling will determine whether the Fourth Amendment requires individual probable cause for each person identified through a geofence, or whether location data visible to a third-party app provider falls outside constitutional protection under the third-party doctrine.