Chatrie is a surprising opinion.  Five Justices joined together and wrote an expansive pro-privacy opinion.  The Court took its past precedents on smart phone privacy and extended them. Traditionally, the greatest Fourth Amendment protection has been in the home.  Under Chatrie, however, there may be more constitutional privacy for what people do on their phone than for what they do in their home.

Orin Kerr is the Stella W. & Ira S. Lillick Professor at Stanford Law School and a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. He teaches and writes on criminal law and criminal procedure, often focusing on the Fourth Amendment and the role of new technologies. His latest book is The Digital Fourth Amendment (Oxford 2025).