Law360 (October 7, 2026, 8:28 PM EDT) -- The Pennsylvania Supreme Court agreed this week to hear a challenge to a geofence warrant just months after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Chatrie v. U.S. that such warrants implicate Fourth Amendment search protections.

The commonwealth's high court said Monday it will determine whether an appellate panel erred in affirming the denial of a defendant's motion to suppress a geofence warrant — which compelled Google LLC to turn over users' location data to law enforcement. The evidence was used to convict Keith Choice of aggravated assault in a car-to-car shooting, and the appellate panel said in the decision that the issue was one of first impression in the commonwealth, according to court documents.

The case stems from a January 2019 shooting on a highway that left a victim with a graze wound on his arm. Police investigators obtained a geofence warrant to obtain geolocation data from Google for users who were on the highway and an exit near where the shooting took place over a seven-minute period, according to the appellate court's opinion.

The results led to charges against Choice.

In April 2023, Choice sought to suppress the geofence searches, saying the warrants were overbroad as they searched millions of users' data and that the government lacked particularized probable cause.

In fighting Choice's suppression motion, the commonwealth said the geofencing inquiry "is not a search" — an argument the U.S. Supreme Court would later reject in Chatrie .

The suppression court ruled that because police had obtained a warrant, it did not need to determine whether a geofence inquiry is a search that requires a warrant, but that the warrants were supported by probable cause and highly particularized.

In 2024, Choice was convicted at a bench trial and sentenced to six to 23 months in prison followed by two years of probation. Choice appealed, saying the geolocation data should have been suppressed, but the Pennsylvania Superior Court affirmed the conviction.

The appellate panel held in September 2025 that Google's practice of anonymizing device IDs before providing them to law enforcement avoided "a particularity problem" and that the warrant was not overbroad.

"Given the narrowly-tailored geographical and temporal range of the information sought in the warrant application, the warrant set forth 'a fair probability that contraband or evidence of a crime' would be found within the anonymized list law enforcement sought," according to the Superior Court's opinion. "Accordingly, appellant's issues merit no relief."

In June 2026, however, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its decision in Chatrie, holding that geofence warrants are searches under the Fourth Amendment and that smartphone users have a reasonable expectation of privacy for the location data recorded by their devices.

"Contrary to the government's view, an individual has a legitimate expectation of privacy in the information Location History collects about his cell phone's — meaning his own — movements. The police invade that expectation, and thus conduct a search, when they acquire that information, even though for only a limited period of time and even though via a third-party tech company," Justice Elena Kagan wrote in the opinion.

Privacy expectations stretch back to the Fourth Amendment's beginnings, she said, noting that a "new technology should not transform what individuals had reasonably thought they could withhold from the government."

In its Oct. 5 per curiam order, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court said it would consider two Fourth Amendment issues that Choice had raised: Whether the search warrants and affidavits in question failed to establish individualized probable cause and that the shooter had a cellphone or Android device; and whether each of the three steps in the geofence process was an unconstitutionally overbroad search of constitutionally protected location history data.

Choice is represented by James Berardinelli and Christine Lora of the Montgomery County Public Defender's Office.

The state is represented by Kevin Steele, Robert Falin and William Toal III of the Montgomery County District Attorney's Office.

The case is Commonwealth of Pennsylvania v. Keith Anthony Choice, case number 570 MAL 2025, in the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.

--Additional reporting by Elizabeth Daley. Editing by Linda Voorhis.

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