State of Minnesota v. Ivan Contreras-Sanchez
Opinion text
STATE OF MINNESOTA
IN SUPREME COURT
A22-1579
Court of Appeals Hennesy, J.
Concurring, Hudson, C.J.
Dissenting, McKeig, Moore, III, JJ.
Took no part, Gaïtas, J.
State of Minnesota,
Respondent,
vs. Filed: April 15, 2026
Office of Appellate Courts
Ivan Contreras-Sanchez
Appellant.
________________________
Keith Ellison, Attorney General, Saint Paul, Minnesota; and
Mary F. Moriarty, Hennepin County Attorney, Adam E. Petras, Senior Assistant County
Attorney, Minneapolis, Minnesota, for respondent.
Cathryn Middlebrook, Chief Appellate Public Defender, Jennifer Workman Jesness,
Assistant State Public Defender, Saint Paul, Minnesota, for appellant.
Teresa Nelson, Alicia Granse, American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota, Minneapolis,
Minnesota;
Jennifer Stisa Granick, American Civil Liberties Union Foundation, San Francisco,
California; and
Brett Max Kaufman, American Civil Liberties Union Foundation, New York, New York,
for amici curiae American Civil Liberties Union and American Civil Liberties Union of
Minnesota.
1
Leita Walker, Ballard Spahr, LLP, Minneapolis, Minnesota, for amicus curiae Electronic
Frontier Foundation.
Shauna Faye Kieffer, Minnesota Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, Minneapolis,
Minnesota, for amici curiae National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and
Minnesota Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.
________________________
SYLLABUS
1. Because cell phone users have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their
location data stored by Google, the government conducted a search under Article I,
Section 10, of the Minnesota Constitution when it accessed a cell phone user’s location
data stored by Google.
2. Geofence warrants are not categorically prohibited general warrants under
the Minnesota Constitution.
3. Because the warrant application in this case established a fair probability that
Google’s servers would contain evidence of a crime, there was probable cause to issue the
geofence warrant; this geofence warrant did not require a probable cause nexus for every
person within the geofence.
4. A geofence warrant is insufficiently particular under the Minnesota
Constitution when it gives law enforcement unchecked discretion to determine which
device identification numbers inside the geofence will be subject to an additional search
for more location information.
Reversed and remanded.
2
OPINION
HENNESY, Justice.
In this case we are asked for the first time to consider the constitutionality of a
geofence warrant, a type of warrant that allows law enforcement to obtain information from
a tech company regarding the presence of customer devices, including cell phones, located
within selected geographic coordinates. Appellant Ivan Contreras-Sanchez was convicted
of second-degree intentional murder for killing Manuel Mandujano. Law enforcement
connected Contreras-Sanchez to the crime using data gathered under a geofence warrant.
Contreras-Sanchez appealed his conviction, arguing that the geofence warrant violated the
United States and Minnesota Constitutions. The court of appeals affirmed his conviction.
We conclude that the Minnesota Constitution does not provide the government
unrestricted access to a person’s location data stored by Google and that the warrant here
failed to satisfy the particularity requirement. Because we conclude that Contreras-
Sanchez’s rights under the Minnesota Constitution were violated, we have no need to
address whether this warrant satisfied the requirements under the Fourth Amendment to
the United States Constitution. Specifically, we conclude that the government conducted
a search under the Minnesota Constitution when it accessed Contreras-Sanchez’s location
data stored by Google, which holds information about intimate and deeply private aspects
of a person’s life: their familial, religious, political, health care, and other highly sensitive
activities and relationships. We acknowledge, however, that geofence warrants are a useful
tool for law enforcement and reject the notion that geofence warrants are per se
unconstitutional general warrants. We also conclude that the geofence warrant here was
3
supported by probable cause. Finally, we hold that the geofence warrant in this case was
not constitutionally particular, because it did not require a judge to assess law
enforcement’s decision to use data from a narrowly defined (both in time and geography)
geofence warrant to significantly expand the warrant’s geographic and temporal scope.
Had there been judicial review of the reasonableness of that expanded search, the result
here may have been different.
Because the court of appeals held the geofence warrant was sufficiently particular,
it did not decide whether the good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule applies in this
context or whether the error was harmless. The parties did not ask for review of these
issues in their petition to our court. Consequently, we reverse the court of appeals and
remand to that court to consider the merits of issues it did not reach. 1
FACTS
On April 26, 2021, police responded to a report of a body found in a drainage culvert
in Castle Rock Township. A forensic examiner identified the body as Manuel Mandujano,
who had last had contact with family on March 25, 2021. Officers applied for a geofence
warrant, requesting location history data generated by devices registering within a specified
geographic location near the body and stored by Google. The officers asked for this data
from the date Mandujano disappeared until the date his body was found. The geofence
1
As we note below, because the issue of whether the execution of a geofence warrant
violates the Fourth Amendment is currently pending before the United States Supreme
Court in Chatrie v. United States, 136 F.4th 100 (4th Cir. 2025), cert. granted, No. 25-112,
2026 WL 120676 (U.S. Jan. 16, 2026), there may be circumstances in which it is
appropriate for the court of appeals to consider the Supreme Court’s decision in that case
on remand.
4
specified in the warrant request had a rectangular perimeter of 65 feet by 290 feet and
encompassed the culvert, the public road nearby, and a portion of the right-of-way ditch.
According to the warrant application, only “a small number” of vehicles use the road and
there are only three residences on that section of road.
The warrant application stated that a medical examiner had determined that
Mandujano’s “manner of death was [h]omicide, however a cause of death was still
unknown.” According to the application, an informant told police they knew someone who
had been involved in Mandujano’s murder and that others had also been involved. The
informant said that the people involved in the murder had cell phones, though the informant
was unsure which brand and which providers the participants used. The warrant
application identified the place to be searched as “Google, LLC.” Regarding Google’s data
collection processes, the application stated: “Google, LLC retains and uses location
information for individuals who use a wide range of Google productions [sic]. This
information kept by Google also contains location information, which can be very
accurate.”
The warrant application outlined a three-step process law enforcement would use to
obtain data from Google. In step one, the application requested that Google be ordered to
provide anonymous device identification numbers (device IDs) for every data point within
the geofence during the one-month period from March 25, 2021, when Mandujano went
missing, to April 26, 2021, when his body was found. An officer attested that there “is no
way . . . to identify the related user of the device with this information alone.”
5
In step two, the warrant application provided:
• Law enforcement will analyze this location data to identify users who
may have witnessed or participated in the [s]ubject [o]ffenses . . . .
• For those accounts identified as relevant to the ongoing investigation
through an analysis of provided records, and upon demand, [Google]
shall provide additional location history outside of the predefined area for
those relevant accounts to determine path of travel. This additional
location history shall not exceed 60 minutes plus or minus the first and
last timestamp associated with the account in the initial dataset. (The
purpose of path of travel/contextual location points is to eliminate outlier
points where, from the surrounding data, it becomes clear the reported
point(s) are not indicative of the device actually being within the scope
of the warrant.)
(Emphasis added.) In other words, step two had two phases: first, it authorized officers to
determine which device IDs merited further search for additional location history outside
the targeted geofence boundary for 60 minutes before and after those device IDs were
within the geofence boundary, to show their paths of travel; and second, upon officers’
“demand,” it compelled Google to release the additional location history as to the selected
device IDs. At step three, the warrant application authorized officers to analyze the step-
two data and “demand” that Google identify the subscribers connected to relevant
accounts. 2
2
Notably, the warrant application and the proposed warrant used different language
to describe step three. The warrant application stated that police would apply for a second
warrant using the data collected from steps one and two and laying out “the probable cause
related to the specific ‘Device ID(s)’ that were discovered as related to the crime” to obtain
the subscriber information associated with relevant device IDs. The language in the
proposed warrant itself simply required Google to provide law enforcement with subscriber
information for “accounts identified as relevant . . . upon demand.” The proposed warrant,
whose language the district court adopted in the signed warrant, did not require law
enforcement to obtain a second warrant before demanding Google provide subscriber
information.
6
A district court judge signed a warrant with language identical to the proposed
warrant. Shortly after law enforcement served the warrant, Google informed officers that
processing the full month of data requested, from March 25 to April 26, 2021, would
“overload [Google’s] systems.” Google recommended breaking this timeframe into shorter
portions to process the data faster. Police narrowed their search timeframe and requested
data from two seven-day periods: March 25–31 and April 1–7.
Google provided, and police analyzed, this data. Between March 25 and March 31,
the data showed that 12 devices entered the geofence. Eleven devices registered locations
only once. The data showed that one device was in the area for 10 minutes, registering
locations within the geofence 46 times. Plotting these points on a map, officers saw that
device had been located directly over the culvert. Data from the second seven-day
timeframe revealed an additional 19 devices that registered locations within the geofence,
none staying for longer than a few minutes.
Police next asked Google for step-two location data for the device ID that logged
46 data points in the culvert. They did not seek an additional warrant prior to making this
request. Step-two data revealed that the device ID registered a location at a gas station
during the 60 minutes prior to entering the geofence. Law enforcement reviewed
surveillance video from the relevant time at that gas station and saw “four persons of
interest” enter the station. An officer recognized one individual and a vehicle from the
ongoing investigation.
Police then executed step three in a manner consistent with the warrant application.
Officers applied for a second warrant based on the data they had received and analyzed in
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the previous two steps and the surveillance video. They narrowed their search to the single
device ID that generated 46 data points in the culvert and requested that Google identify
all “subscriber and/or user information, including the name, addresses, account status, all
email addresses, alternative email addresses, cellular, home and business addresses, and
phone numbers” associated with that device ID. A district court judge approved this
warrant. Google identified the device ID as registered to Contreras-Sanchez.
In an interview with police, Contreras-Sanchez admitted to participating in
Mandujano’s murder. On November 5, 2021, the State charged Contreras-Sanchez with
second-degree intentional murder and second-degree unintentional felony murder in
connection with Mandujano’s death.
Prior to trial, Contreras-Sanchez moved to suppress all evidence obtained through
the geofence warrant. He argued that all geofence warrants are per se unconstitutional
general warrants and, in the alternative, that this geofence warrant lacked probable cause,
was not sufficiently particular, and was overbroad. The State argued that there is no
reasonable expectation of privacy in location data stored at Google. In the alternative, the
State argued that this geofence warrant was supported by probable cause and was
sufficiently particular. The district court denied the motion to suppress. A jury found
Contreras-Sanchez guilty of both counts of second-degree murder. 3
Contreras-Sanchez appealed, arguing to the court of appeals that all geofence
warrants are unconstitutional general warrants and the warrant in this case violated the
3
The district court judge only entered conviction on the second-degree intentional
murder verdict.
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Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution and Article I, Section 10, of the
Minnesota Constitution. Specifically, he argued that there was no probable cause to issue
this warrant, and that it was not sufficiently particular and was overbroad. The State argued
that the geofence warrant was constitutional, but, if it was not, the good-faith exception to
the exclusionary rule should apply and the alleged error was harmless. The court of appeals
affirmed the district court’s denial of Contreras-Sanchez’s motion to suppress, concluding
that the geofence warrant did not violate the United States or Minnesota Constitutions
because it was not an unconstitutional general warrant, was supported by probable cause,
and was sufficiently particular and not overbroad. State v. Contreras-Sanchez, 5 N.W.3d
151, 171 (Minn. App. 2024). Consequently, the court of appeals did not reach the State’s
arguments regarding the good-faith exception and harmless error.
We granted review to address the constitutionality of geofence warrants.
ANALYSIS
We begin our analysis by determining whether law enforcement may access location
data stored by Google without a warrant and, if not, determining whether all geofence
warrants are categorically prohibited as general warrants. We then consider the
characteristics of the warrant application in this case to determine whether there was
probable cause to issue the warrant and, finally, whether the warrant was sufficiently
particular.
In conducting this analysis, we recognize that neither we nor the United States
Supreme Court has previously addressed whether a geofence warrant violates the
constitution. We further acknowledge that the United States Supreme Court has recently
9
granted review on related issues. See Chatrie v. United States, 136 F.4th 100 (4th Cir.
2025), cert. granted, No. 25-112, 2026 WL 120676 (U.S. Jan. 16, 2026). We issue our
opinion without waiting for the Supreme Court’s disposition so as to avoid further delaying
a decision in light of our responsibility to decide the issues presented not only for the parties
but for the people of Minnesota. Nor is there any need to stay this case when we have
repeatedly held, “without a doubt[,] that Article I, Section 10 of the Minnesota Constitution
provides greater protection against suspicionless law enforcement conduct than the Fourth
Amendment to the United States Constitution.” State v. Leonard, 943 N.W.2d 149, 156
(Minn. 2020) (citing State v. Carter, 697 N.W.2d 199 (Minn. 2005), and Ascher v. Comm’r
of Pub. Safety, 519 N.W.2d 183 (Minn. 1994)). Thus, irrespective of what the Supreme
Court decides the United States Constitution permits in Chatrie, we decide this case under
the Minnesota Constitution, “[e]xercising our independent authority to interpret our own
state constitution to protect the rights of the citizens of Minnesota.” Ascher, 519 N.W.2d
at 187 (citing Michigan v. Long, 463 U.S. 1032, 1041 (1983)); see also Long, 463 U.S. at
1040 (“Respect for the independence of state courts, as well as avoidance of rendering
advisory opinions, have been the cornerstones of [the United States Supreme Court’s]
refusal to decide cases where there is an adequate and independent state ground.”).
We hold, first, that under the Minnesota Constitution there is a reasonable
expectation of privacy in a cell phone user’s location data stored by Google. Consequently,
law enforcement conducts a search when accessing this data and must obtain a valid
warrant to do so. Second, we hold that geofence warrants are not categorically prohibited
as general warrants. Third, we conclude that the warrant application in this case established
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a fair probability that Google’s servers would contain evidence of a crime such that there
was probable cause to issue the geofence warrant, and this warrant did not require a
probable cause nexus for every person within the geofence. Finally, we conclude the
warrant here was insufficiently particular because it allowed police unchecked discretion
to determine which device IDs inside the geofence they would subject to an expanded
search for additional location information. Because we hold that Contreras-Sanchez’s
rights were violated under the Minnesota Constitution, we do not need to reach his Fourth
Amendment challenge. See Leonard, 943 N.W.2d at 152 n.1; State v. Flowers, 734 N.W.2d
239, 258 (Minn. 2007). Based on our holdings, we remand to the court of appeals to
determine whether the good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule applies or whether the
error was harmless. 4
I.
In response to Contreras-Sanchez’s claim that all geofence warrants are general
warrants, the State argues that no warrant is necessary for the government to obtain Google
user location data. The State asserts that obtaining such user data is not a search because
there is no reasonable expectation of privacy in the location data geofence warrants target.
We address, first, the threshold question of whether law enforcement’s request for location
data within a geofence constitutes a search. For the reasons below, we conclude that when
4
Although we do not need to address Contreras-Sanchez’s Fourth Amendment
challenge because we hold that his rights were violated under the Minnesota Constitution,
if the Supreme Court concludes in Chatrie that the execution of the geofence warrant
violated the Fourth Amendment, we permit the court of appeals on remand to address
Chatrie’s applicability to Contreras-Sanchez’s Fourth Amendment arguments.
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law enforcement accesses such data, it constitutes a search under Article I, Section 10, of
the Minnesota Constitution.
A.
Contreras-Sanchez claims that law enforcement conducted an unconstitutional
search when it executed the geofence warrant for his location data stored by Google. We
conduct a de novo review of “the district court’s legal conclusions on the constitutionality
of searches and seizures.” State v. Westrom, 6 N.W.3d 145, 153 (Minn. 2024).
Article I, Section 10, of the Minnesota Constitution protects the “right of the people
to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and
seizures.” Minn. Const. art. I, § 10. “A search occurs when the government intrudes upon
a ‘reasonable expectation of privacy’ to gain information.” Westrom, 6 N.W.3d at 153.
Although we have not addressed whether there is a reasonable expectation of
privacy in location data held by Google, we have recognized that “general searches of
electronic data threaten individual privacy.” State v. Sardina-Padilla, 7 N.W.3d 585, 599
(Minn. 2024). And we have noted our concern that cell phones can track a person’s location
history with alarming accuracy, revealing not only the details of a person’s movements,
“but through them his familial, political, professional, religious, and sexual associations.”
In re B.H., 946 N.W.2d 860, 869 (Minn. 2020) (citation omitted). In State v. Leonard, we
recognized that the Minnesota Constitution affords Minnesotans a reasonable expectation
of privacy in the “highly sensitive location information found in a [hotel] guest registry.”
943 N.W.2d at 156. In that case, law enforcement inspected—without a warrant—a
registry that state law required hotels to keep recording guests’ names, addresses, and
12
vehicle information, and the names and addresses of any traveling companions. Id. at 153.
In holding that this inspection constituted a search, we observed that “most Minnesotans
would be surprised and alarmed if th[is] sensitive location information” was available to
the government without any particularized suspicion of criminal activity. Id. at 158. We
focused on the nature of the private information the search revealed; namely, “highly
sensitive location information” that might reveal “deeply private[] activities,” such as
whether a guest had “stayed overnight at the hotel to attend a political or religious
conference in the hotel ballroom” or had “stayed overnight before a medical appointment
in hopes of keeping a diagnosis private.” Id. at 157–59.
In our view, the location data that Google stores presents even greater privacy
concerns than those we considered in Leonard. Similar to a hotel registry, the location
information Google gathers and stores through cell phones 5 contains highly sensitive
information about deeply personal activities. But while a hotel registry records a snapshot
in time, the location data stored by Google is retrospective; its servers hold a
comprehensive chronology of a person’s movements, tracked by their cell phone. And
though geofence warrants may authorize law enforcement to retrieve data from only a brief
time span, much like a hotel registry, this short time period may still reveal the most private
5
While the geofence warrant in this case requested data not only for cell phones but
all Google-connected devices, we focus here on the location data collected by cell phones
for two reasons: first, the relevant device in this case is Contreras-Sanchez’s cell phone,
and second, because “cell phones and the services they provide are such a pervasive and
insistent part of daily life that carrying one is indispensable to participation in modern
society.” Carpenter v. United States, 585 U.S. 296, 315 (2018) (citation omitted) (internal
quotation marks omitted).
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moments of a person’s life, including their “familial, political, professional, religious, and
sexual associations.” B.H., 946 N.W.2d at 869 (citation omitted). In the present case, step-
two data revealed that the device ID of interest stopped at a gas station prior to entering the
geofence. Under other circumstances, this data could easily have revealed a visit to a health
care provider, lawyer, gun store, civic organization, political group, charity, or place of
worship.
The government’s capacity to obtain, through Google, a comprehensive catalog of
a person’s physical movements recorded by the phone they carry is a privacy concern far
beyond that posed by a name and address listed on a hotel registry—information in which
we have already recognized an expectation of privacy under the state constitution. See
Leonard, 943 N.W.2d at 158. We conclude that under Article I, Section 10, of the
Minnesota Constitution, that same expectation of privacy applies to the location data
Google collects through tracking its users’ cell phones. 6 Importantly, this does not mean
6
The dissent suggests that Contreras-Sanchez did not meet his burden of establishing
that he has a subjective expectation of privacy in his own location data stored by Google.
The State did not make this argument. Nonetheless, we observe that Leonard does not
support the dissent’s implication that Contreras-Sanchez cannot have an expectation of
privacy in his sensitive location data without first establishing that he personally took steps
to protect his data from the third party—Google. We did not require that Leonard show
any subjective expectation of privacy in the information he provided in his particular hotel
registry when we concluded that a guest has a reasonable expectation of privacy, under the
Minnesota Constitution, in the location information recorded in a hotel registry.
943 N.W.2d at 158–59. In reaching this conclusion, we observed that “most Minnesotans
would be surprised and alarmed if the sensitive location information found in the guest
registries at hotels, motels, or RV campsites was readily available” to the government
“without any particularized suspicion of criminal activity.” Id. at 158. Here, Contreras-
Sanchez is the Google user whose records were searched, and he has shown the sensitive
location information at issue was his and that his constitutional rights are at stake.
14
the government cannot access users’ data—it only means that the government must obtain
a warrant to do so. See Westrom, 6 N.W.3d at 153 (“A search occurs when the government
intrudes upon a reasonable expectation of privacy to gain information.”) (citation omitted)
(internal quotation marks omitted); State v. Johnson, 813 N.W.2d 1, 5 (Minn. 2012)
(observing that whether a search is constitutionally reasonable generally depends on
whether the government complies with the warrant clause “by obtaining a warrant from a
neutral magistrate based upon probable cause”).
B.
We reach this conclusion by interpreting Article I, Section 10, of the Minnesota
Constitution independently of the United States Supreme Court’s articulation of Fourth
Amendment protections. See State v. Fuller, 374 N.W.2d 722, 726 (Minn. 1985)
(observing that “as the highest court of this state, we are independently responsible for
safeguarding the rights of [our] citizens” (alternation in original) (citation omitted) (internal
quotation marks omitted)). We observe, however, that when we interpret our constitution
independently of the Supreme Court’s Fourth Amendment jurisprudence, that court’s
decisions “interpreting a comparable provision of the federal constitution that, as here, is
textually identical to a provision of our constitution, [are] of inherently persuasive,
although not necessarily compelling, force.” Id. at 727. Here, the Supreme Court’s
analysis of expectations of privacy under the Fourth Amendment in the context of similar
technology, to date, supports—although it does not compel—our analysis.
Similar to Article I, Section 10, the Fourth Amendment guarantees people the right
“to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches
15
and seizures.” U.S. Const. amend. IV. “[T]he Fourth Amendment protects people, not
places.” Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 351 (1967). And it protects not only “property
rights,” but “certain expectations of privacy as well.” Carpenter v. United States, 585 U.S.
296, 304 (2018) (citation omitted). A search occurs “[w]hen an individual seeks to preserve
something as private, and his expectation of privacy is one that society is prepared to
recognize as reasonable.” Id. (citation omitted) (internal quotation marks omitted).
The Fourth Amendment aims to secure “the privacies of life” against “arbitrary
power.” Boyd v. United States, 116 U.S. 616, 630 (1886). “A central aim of the Framers
was ‘to place obstacles in the way of a too permeating police surveillance.’ ” Carpenter,
585 U.S. at 305 (quoting United States v. Di Re, 332 U.S. 581, 595 (1948)). The United
States Supreme Court has applied these principles to protect individuals from being “at the
mercy of advancing technology.” Id. (citation omitted).
In Carpenter v. United States, the Supreme Court held that a person has a reasonable
expectation of privacy in cell-site location information (CSLI), data similar to the location
data at issue in this case. Id. at 313. Cell phones automatically create CSLI, which third
parties—specifically, wireless carriers—store. 7 Id. at 300–01. In analyzing whether cell
phone users have a reasonable expectation of privacy in CSLI, the Supreme Court noted
that “a majority of this Court has already recognized that individuals have a reasonable
expectation of privacy in the whole of their physical movements” in United States v. Jones,
7
Communication between cell phones and cell towers creates CSLI. “Cell phones
continuously scan their environment looking for the best signal, which generally comes
from the closest cell site. . . . Each time the phone connects to a cell site, it generates a
time-stamped record known as [CSLI].” Carpenter, 585 U.S. at 300–01.
16
in which the Supreme Court held that attaching a Global-Positioning-System (GPS)
tracking device to a car and monitoring the car’s movement was a search. 8 Id. at 310 (citing
Jones, 565 U.S. 400, 415, 430 (2012)). According to the Court, CSLI raises similar
concerns with respect to a person’s expectation of privacy in their physical movements,
because the data “provides an intimate window into a person’s life, revealing not only his
particular movements, but through them his ‘familial, political, professional, religious, and
sexual associations.’ ” Id. at 311 (quoting Jones, 565 U.S. at 415 (Sotomayor, J.,
concurring)). The Court recognized that allowing law enforcement unfettered access to
this data contravenes “society’s expectation . . . that law enforcement agents and others
would not—and indeed, in the main, simply could not—secretly monitor and catalogue
every single movement of an individual’s car for a very long period.” Id. at 310 (quoting
Jones, 565 U.S. at 429 (Alito, J., concurring)).
The Court concluded in Carpenter that the “privacy concerns” CSLI presents are
more significant than those GPS raises in two respects. Id. at 311. First, CSLI tracks
people through the phones they carry, and people carry their phones with them every
moment of every day. Id. (observing that “[w]hile individuals regularly leave their
vehicles, they compulsively carry cell phones with them” everywhere and always). CSLI
thus “follows its owner beyond public thoroughfares and into private residences, doctor’s
offices, political headquarters, and other potentially revealing locales.” Id. Second, the
8
In Jones, the Supreme Court held, under a property-rights framework, that a search
occurred when the government installed a GPS device on a car and used it to monitor the
car’s movement on public streets. 565 U.S. 400, 404–06 (2012).
17
data is “retrospective,” allowing officers to “travel back in time to retrace a person’s
whereabouts, subject only to the retention polices of the wireless carriers.” Id. at 312
(observing that GPS data, in contrast, requires police to "know in advance whether they
want to follow a particular individual, or when”). This enables law enforcement to use
CSLI to track anyone at any time through their cell phone, “not just those belonging to
persons who might happen to come under investigation.” Id.
Carpenter and Jones provide additional support for our conclusion that the people
of Minnesota have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their cell phone location data
stored by Google. Like CSLI, this data tracks a person’s movements through the phone (or
other Google-connected device) they carry, providing a near-perfect record of the person’s
location. And this location data is more precise than the location data either CSLI or GPS
provides. See United States v. Smith, 110 F.4th 817, 833 (5th Cir. 2024) (“Geofences also
exemplify the [Supreme] Court’s concern with pinpoint location data—this technology
provides more precise location data than either CSLI or GPS.” (citing Geofence Warrants
and the Fourth Amendment, 134 Harv. L. Rev. 2508, 2510 (2021)), cert. denied sub nom.,
Smith v. United States, 146 S. Ct. 356 (mem.) (2025). The location data stored by Google
does not rely on a single input from a GPS signal or cell tower, but instead “applies a highly
sophisticated synthesis of multiple inputs to pinpoint a mobile device’s exact location.”
Barbara Bathke, Google and the Role of Surveillance Intermediaries in Geofence Warrants,
26 Tul. J. Tech. & Intell. Prop. 111, 116 (2024).
While we conclude there is persuasive support in Carpenter and Jones for our
decision that Minnesotans have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the sensitive,
18
personal, and comprehensive location data Google collects, in the end, we decide this issue
under the Minnesota Constitution alone.
C.
The State advances two arguments in support of its position that cell phone users do
not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in location data stored by Google. First, the
State contends that users lose any reasonable expectation of privacy when they knowingly
expose their location data to a third party. Second, the State argues that there could be no
reasonable expectation of privacy in this case because in steps one and two of law
enforcement’s warrant application the data requested was anonymous. We address each
argument in turn.
1.
Under the third-party doctrine, a defendant loses a reasonable expectation of privacy
in information they disclose to a third party. Leonard, 943 N.W.2d at 158. In Leonard, we
expressly declined to broadly apply the third-party doctrine to Article I, Section 10, of the
Minnesota Constitution. See id. at 158 n.14 (noting that “[w]e have not broadly applied
the third-party doctrine to Article I, Section 10 challenges” and that “we do not decide
whether [the third-party doctrine] should apply broadly under Minnesota law more
generally”). But, as in Leonard, even if we were to generally recognize the third-party
doctrine under the Minnesota Constitution, “the principles underlying the third-party
doctrine are not implicated in this context”—where the information disclosed to the third
party is “sensitive location information.” Id. at 159.
19
In Leonard, we explained that “[a]lthough a guest registry includes seemingly public
information—a name and address—the act of recording this information in the guest
registry creates sensitive location information because a hotel is a place where people
engage in a variety of . . . legal, but often deeply private, activities.” Id. In declining to
apply the third-party doctrine, we noted that Leonard’s voluntary disclosure of this
information to the hotel “transformed his otherwise public data into sensitive location
information that society is prepared to recognize as a reasonable privacy interest.” Id. at
158–59.
As discussed above, the location information Google maintains is far more
pervasive, personal, and revealing than the location information at issue in Leonard. For
these reasons, we conclude that Minnesotans reasonably expect that the government does
not have unrestricted access to users’ location data that Google stores and which holds
information about intimate and deeply private aspects of their lives. We also conclude,
under Article I, Section 10, of the Minnesota Constitution, that the third-party doctrine does
not apply to the location data stored by Google that geofence warrants target. Law
enforcement’s execution of the geofence warrant here was a search.
Our approach to the third-party doctrine under the Minnesota Constitution here and
in Leonard is similar to, and finds additional persuasive support in, the United States
Supreme Court’s approach in Carpenter. In Carpenter, the Court declined to extend the
third-party doctrine to CSLI even though cell phone users share their locations with their
wireless carriers. 585 U.S. at 308–10. The Carpenter Court noted that the government’s
request to exclude “the exhaustive chronicle of location information casually collected by
20
wireless carriers” from Fourth Amendment protection represented “a significant extension
of [the third-party doctrine] to a distinct category of information.” Id. at 314. And while
the Court acknowledged that a person may have a reduced expectation of privacy in
information knowingly shared with a third party, it confirmed that a legitimate expectation
of privacy may yet remain, particularly with respect to location information—information
for which the Court has shown “special solicitude” in the third-party context. Id. at 314–15.
In deciding whether users maintain any expectation of privacy in CSLI data despite
having shared this information with wireless carriers, the Carpenter Court analyzed the
“nature of the particular documents sought” and whether users voluntarily provided the
information to the third party. Id. at 314, 315. The Court pointed out that in the seminal
third-party doctrine cases Smith v. Maryland, 442 U.S. 735 (1979), and United States v.
Miller, 425 U.S. 435 (1976), the reason there was no legitimate expectation of privacy in
the checks and pen registers 9 at issue was not solely because the defendants had shared
them with third parties, but also because the data revealed little in the way of identifying
information. Carpenter, 585 U.S. at 314. CSLI, the Court reasoned, is in a different
category of information entirely, as it provides a “detailed chronicle of a person’s physical
presence compiled every day, every moment, over several years” and so “implicates
privacy concerns far beyond those considered in Smith and Miller.” Id. at 315.
9
The Supreme Court described a pen register as “a mechanical device that records
the numbers dialed on a telephone by monitoring the electrical impulses caused when the
dial on the telephone is released.” Smith, 442 U.S. at 736 n.1 (citation omitted).
21
The Court also rejected the government’s argument that the third-party doctrine
must apply to CSLI because cell phone users voluntarily share their location information
with third parties. Id. The Court expressed skepticism that a cell phone user truly
voluntarily shares this information simply by carrying a phone. Id. Because a cell phone
is “indispensable” to modern life and creates CSLI without any affirmative act on the user’s
part, the Court concluded that users do not forfeit their reasonable expectation of privacy
in that location data by allowing their wireless carriers to generate and store it. Id. at
315–16.
Here, as in Leonard and Carpenter, the State’s request to extend the third-party
doctrine to location data stored at Google is not a request “for a straightforward application
of the third-party doctrine, but instead a significant extension of it to a distinct category of
information.” Id. at 314; see Leonard, 943 N.W.2d at 158–59 (concluding the court of
appeals erred in applying the third-party doctrine because the doctrine does not apply to
“seemingly public information” that, when shared, becomes sensitive location
information). The “nature of the particular documents sought” here is far more like CSLI
than a pen register or check. See Carpenter, 585 U.S. at 314. Like a search for CSLI—
and unlike a request for the limited information provided by checks or pen registers—a
search for location data within a geofence involves rummaging through the archives of a
third party with the power to protect or reveal highly personal information based on the
history of a cell phone user’s precise physical movements.
Nor does it appear that a cell phone user is knowingly revealing location data to
third parties. See id. (“The third-party doctrine partly stems from the notion that an
22
individual has a reduced expectation of privacy in information knowingly shared with
another.”). The warrant application in this case noted that “Google, LLC retains and uses
location information for individuals who use a wide range of Google productions [sic].”
The Carpenter Court concluded that cell phone users do not truly share CSLI because “cell
phones and the services they provide are such a pervasive and insistent part of daily life
that carrying one is indispensable to participation in modern society.” Id. at 315 (citation
omitted) (internal quotation marks omitted). Google products fall within the category of
“services [cell phones] provide,” id., and are similarly pervasive and fundamental to
participating in our contemporary world. And although Google users may technically “opt
in” to location information storage, their understanding of Google’s process of gathering
location data is imperfect and users’ choices are hardly informed; any opt in by a user
appears, ultimately, illusory. Other courts have noted that Google’s requests for users to
share location data are framed innocuously as features that optimize and personalize
Google’s service; Google does not explain to users that by opting into sharing location data,
Google will continuously track and store users’ physical locations every moment for the
foreseeable future and may share them with the government. See Smith, 110 F.4th at 835;
United States v. Chatrie, 590 F. Supp. 3d 901, 911–12 (E.D. Va. 2022) (referencing an opt-
in prompt that the defendant might have seen stating, in part, “Google needs to periodically
store [your] location to improve route recommendations, search suggestions, and more”),
aff’d on other grounds, 107 F.4th 319 (4th Cir. 2024), aff’d en banc, 136 F.4th 100 (4th Cir.
2025), cert. granted, No. 25-112, 2026 WL 120676 (U.S. Jan. 16, 2026). Google can, in
fact, track and store users’ device location data even when users opt out of location history
23
and other location tracking. In re Search of Info. that is Stored at Premises Controlled by
Google LLC (Info. Stored at Google), 579 F. Supp. 3d 62, 70 (D.D.C. 2021). And the
process of opting out of location tracking can be so confusing that some of Google’s own
employees have indicated in internal emails that they are unsure how to do it and find the
process “enough to confuse a privacy focused [software engineer].” Haley Amster & Brett
Diehl, Against Geofences, 74 Stan. L. Rev. 385, 396–97 (2022) (alteration in original). For
users, “manually deactivating all [location history] sharing remains difficult and
discouraged” by Google). Id. It is apparent that users do not assume the full risk of
permanently disclosing the entirety of their location history when they use Google’s
products or even opt in to Google’s location requests. Instead, the decision of when and to
whom to disclose the comprehensive and intimate details of users’ location history that a
corporation maintains is left in corporate hands.
We conclude that the third-party doctrine does not apply to the location data Google
stores. Although we find additional support for this conclusion in Fourth Amendment
jurisprudence, we decide independently under Article I, Section 10, of the Minnesota
Constitution that, because users do not knowingly expose the comprehensive chronology
of their physical movements by carrying cell phones with Google products that track their
location, they do not lose their reasonable expectation of privacy in this data by doing so. 10
10
There is no reason for us to wait for the United States Supreme Court to decide
Chatrie under the Fourth Amendment when we have the independent power—and the
obligation—to decide this case today under our own constitution. And although the dissent
claims we do not decide this case on “adequate and independent state grounds” because we
discuss Carpenter and other federal cases, we need not ignore all federal caselaw in order
24
2.
The State’s second argument is that there is no reasonable expectation of privacy in
location data obtained in steps one and two of the geofence warrant at issue here because
that data is anonymous. But we conclude, consistent with our prior decisions under
Article I, Section 10, of the Minnesota Constitution, that the constitutional balance must
be struck in favor of protecting the public from even such a minimally intrusive anonymous
search. Cf. Ascher, 519 N.W.2d at 187 (“[W]e conclude that the constitutional balance
must be struck in favor of protecting the traveling public from even the ‘minimally
intrusive’ seizures which occur at a sobriety checkpoint.”).
We do so, in part, based on our skepticism that this location data is truly anonymous,
driven by the concern that it is possible to identify users from this location data via cross-
reference. 11 One need change the facts of the present case only slightly to illustrate this
to decide an issue on adequate and independent state grounds. See Long, 463 U.S. at 1040–
41 (“If a state court chooses merely to rely on federal precedents as it would on the
precedents of all other jurisdictions, then it need only make clear by a plain statement in its
judgment or opinion that the federal cases are being used only for the purpose of guidance,
and do not themselves compel the result that the court has reached.”). We decide today
that there is a reasonable expectation of privacy in this location data not because federal
law (or Carpenter) requires us to do so but because our state constitution and jurisprudence
require it. Our discussion of Carpenter is appropriate because the parties have briefed and
argued it, and it informs our discussion of the third-party doctrine. Carpenter does not,
however, compel the result we reach here.
11
We are not alone in expressing this skepticism. The Fifth Circuit, in Smith,
suggested that data’s anonymity at the start of the geofence warrant process does not
ameliorate privacy concerns because the warrant’s goal is to eventually connect
anonymized data to a person. 110 F.4th at 834 n.9 (5th Cir. 2024). Further, the Fifth Circuit
questioned whether this data is truly anonymous when the data can be cross-referenced to
reveal users’ identities. Id. In addition, researchers have established that “cross-
25
concern. In this case, police obtained step-two location data for an anonymous device ID.
The step-two data revealed that the device user stopped at a gas station. Officers were then
able to obtain surveillance footage from the gas station. If the surveillance footage had
revealed that only one vehicle with a single occupant pulled up to the gas station, police
could have run the plates of the vehicle, found the name and a picture of the registered
owner, compared the picture to the person who stepped out of the vehicle on surveillance
footage, and thereby positively identified the “anonymous” device ID. The fact that
location information can be connected to distinct individuals is of particular concern
considering that, as stated earlier, this data has the tendency to reveal the private details
about a person’s life.
Given the highly sensitive location information at issue here and the ease with which
law enforcement might identify users who were meant to have remained anonymous, we
conclude that a person has a reasonable expectation of privacy in location data of the kind
stored by Google, whether anonymized or not, under Article I, Section 10, of the Minnesota
Constitution. 12
referencing datasets can reveal the identifying information of nearly every ‘anonymized’
user. There are many opportunities to cross-reference an anonymized data dump received
from Google, invading the privacy of all users caught up in the geofence.” Amster & Diehl,
Against Geofences, 74 Stan. L. Rev. at 409.
12
We do not, however, consider whether there is a reasonable expectation of privacy
in any other form of anonymous data.
26
II.
We next turn to the question of whether all geofence warrants are categorically
unconstitutional general warrants. Article I, Section 10, of the Minnesota Constitution
requires that a search warrant be supported by probable cause and “particularly describ[e]
the place to be searched and the person or things to be seized.” Minn. Const. art. I, § 10.
The particularity requirement prohibits law enforcement from conducting general or
exploratory searches. Sardina-Padilla, 7 N.W.3d at 598. A general warrant “specifie[s]
only an offense and le[aves] the decision of whom to arrest and where to search to the
discretion of the official executing the warrant.” State v. Jackson, 742 N.W.2d 163, 169
(Minn. 2007). General warrants are problematic because they authorize “a general,
exploratory rummaging in a person’s belongings.” City of Golden Valley v. Wiebesick,
899 N.W.2d 152, 162 (Minn. 2017).
Contreras-Sanchez argues that all geofence warrants are categorically prohibited
general warrants because they authorize police to search the data of every person whose
device registers within a geofence area, regardless of whether there is probable cause to
search each person, and because they afford police “unbridled discretion” to target
individuals in the geofence in the warrant’s subsequent steps. But if even one geofence
warrant could be constitutionally valid, then it cannot be true that all geofence warrants are
categorically prohibited. We agree with the court of appeals that it is possible for a
geofence warrant to be so narrow that it only captures one person’s data. See Contreras-
Sanchez, 5 N.W.3d at 164. The court of appeals provided the following hypothetical as an
example of a potentially constitutional geofence warrant:
27
[I]magine that a surveillance camera captures an unidentifiable suspect
making a cell-phone call in front of a business that the suspect just
burglarized. The phone call occurs in the middle of the night and in a
sparsely populated area. The surveillance footage shows no one else in the
area for several hours before and after the phone call, and there are no
dwellings in the vicinity of where the phone call was made. In this
hypothetical situation, law enforcement could obtain a very narrow geofence
warrant, limited in both time and location, that virtually guarantees the
warrant would only capture the location-history data of the burglary suspect’s
cell phone.
Id. Under these circumstances, the geofence warrant would be directed at a single suspect,
particularized to that suspect, and capture data only from that suspect. Assuming this
hypothetical warrant was also designed to prevent the particularity concerns we discuss
below by, for example, requiring independent warrants at each step to limit officer
discretion at every stage in the process of gathering and identifying location data within a
geofence, then the warrant would be sufficiently particular to remove officer discretion
regarding where and whom to search. Thus, because not all geofence warrants are
necessarily unconstitutional, we hold that geofence warrants are not categorically
unconstitutional general warrants, and courts should assess their validity on a case-by-case
basis. 13
13
Only one court—the Fifth Circuit in Smith—has concluded that all geofence
warrants are categorically unconstitutional general warrants. 110 F.4th at 837–38. The
Fifth Circuit determined that geofence warrants are general warrants because, in step one,
law enforcement searches through “troves of location data from hundreds of millions of
Google users without any description of the particular suspect” to identify the device IDs
present inside the geofence. Id. This argument is unpersuasive. It is Google, not law
enforcement, that conducts searches through data to identify the device IDs present inside
the geofence. And every search, even a search of physical records, requires a cursory
inspection to distinguish records that fall within the scope of the warrant from those that
do not. See United States v. Rhine, 652 F. Supp. 3d 38, 82 (D.D.C. 2023) (“[T]he relevant
28
III.
We now turn to the characteristics of the specific warrant in the present case.
Contreras-Sanchez first claims that the warrant lacked probable cause under the United
States and Minnesota constitutions. “[N]o warrant shall issue, but upon probable
cause . . . .” Minn. Const. art. I, § 10; see also U.S. Const. amend. IV (“[N]o Warrants shall
issue, but upon probable cause . . . .”). Probable cause requires a “ ‘fair probability that
contraband or evidence of a crime will be found in a particular place.’ ” State v. Wiley,
366 N.W.2d 265, 268 (Minn. 1985) (quoting Illinois v. Gates, 462 U.S. 213, 238 (1983)).
Probable cause “does not deal with hard certainties, but with probabilities.” Gates,
462 U.S. at 231. An issuing judge makes a probable cause determination after considering
the totality of the circumstances in the search warrant application and accompanying
affidavit. State v. Wiggins, 4 N.W.3d 138, 145 (Minn. 2024). In making a probable cause
determination, judges may draw on common sense and include reasonable inferences that
law enforcement drew from facts. State v. Lester, 874 N.W.2d 768, 771 (Minn. 2016). “We
question is not how Google runs searches on its data, but what the warrant authorizes the
Government to search and seize. . . . [Many searches] necessarily . . . require the third
party to search some group of records larger than those specifically requested, whether they
reside in a file cabinet or on a server.”). Contreras-Sanchez did not argue that the Fifth
Circuit’s reasoning on this issue applies in this case. And in any event, the Fifth Circuit
affirmed the denial of the motion to suppress evidence derived from the geofence warrant
under the good-faith exception. Smith, 110 F.4th at 829, 840.
Here, because we hold below that the warrant violated Contreras-Sanchez’s rights,
we do not address the general warrant issue under the Fourth Amendment. If the Supreme
Court in Chatrie, however, reaches that issue and decides that a geofence warrant is a
general warrant under the Fourth Amendment, we permit the court of appeals to address
that issue on remand when addressing the applicability of the good-faith exception and
harmless error.
29
review only the warrant application and supporting affidavits to determine if the issuing
judge had a substantial basis for concluding that probable cause existed.” Wiggins,
4 N.W.3d at 145 (citations omitted) (internal quotation marks omitted). “When we perform
a totality of the circumstances analysis on a warrant application, [w]e defer to the issuing
magistrate, recognizing that doubtful or marginal cases should be largely determined by
the preference to be accorded to warrants.” Id. at 145–46 (alteration in original) (citations
omitted) (internal quotation marks omitted).
This is an issue that we arguably do not need to reach, given that we independently
conclude in Part IV that the warrant at issue here fails under the particularity requirement
of the Minnesota Constitution. But to the extent it may bear upon the applicability of the
good-faith exception on remand, we address the issue of probable cause and hold, rather
than simply assume without deciding, that the warrant here was supported by probable
cause. In doing so, we are cognizant that the issue of probable cause under the Fourth
Amendment is before the Supreme Court in Chatrie. See Chatrie, 136 F.4th 100, cert.
granted, No. 25-112, 2026 WL 120676 (U.S. Jan. 16, 2026) (granting review on whether
the execution of a geofence warrant violated the Fourth Amendment). Nonetheless, for the
sake of completeness—and because the probable cause issue is one that is intrinsically tied
to the particular facts of the case, and thus Chatrie’s applicability is uncertain—we address
the issue here and conclude that probable cause existed. 14
14
If the Supreme Court in Chatrie decides that the geofence warrant in that case lacked
probable cause, we permit the court of appeals to consider on remand what bearing that
decision has on our determination that the warrant here was supported by probable cause,
30
Contreras-Sanchez argues, first, that there was no probable cause to support issuing
this warrant because the supporting affidavit alleged only that the perpetrators owned cell
phones, not that they carried their cell phones at the time Mandujano’s body was moved
into the culvert. The warrant application stated that an anonymous informant reported “that
other potential suspects . . . have cell phones. [The informant was] unsure what brand of
cell phone or who their providers were.” But the issuing judge could have reasonably
concluded, given the ubiquity of cell phones, that the perpetrators likely had their cell
phones with them at the time Mandujano was killed. Individuals “compulsively carry cell
phones with them all the time.” Carpenter, 585 U.S. at 311; see also Riley v. California,
573 U.S. 373, 385 (2014) (“[Cell phones] are now such a pervasive and insistent part of
daily life that the proverbial visitor from Mars might conclude they were an important
feature of human anatomy.”). Given the pervasiveness of cell phones, and the specific
information that the perpetrators of this crime owned them, there was a fair probability that
the perpetrators carried their cell phones while transporting the body into the geofence
perimeter.
Contreras-Sanchez next argues that there was no probable cause to issue the warrant
because the supporting affidavit did not allege that the suspects had used Google’s location
tracking technology. The application states, “Your affiant knows Google, LLC retains and
uses location information for individuals who use a wide range of Google productions [sic].
This information kept by Google also contains location information, which can be very
and to consider what independent effect such a finding has on the applicability of the good-
faith exception to the exclusionary rule.
31
accurate.” While law enforcement’s description of Google’s processes of data collection
was sparse, the application needed only to provide a fair probability that evidence of a
crime would be found on Google’s servers. See Wiley, 366 N.W.2d at 268. In the present
case, the warrant affidavit stated that Google stored location data “for individuals who use
a wide range of Google productions [sic].” The issuing judge could have found, based on
this language, that there was a fair probability that Google, a large, multinational
corporation whose popular applications are used on many types of cell phones, would have
collected location data from a perpetrator’s cell phone.
Next, Contreras-Sanchez argues that even if the warrant application established
probable cause that evidence of a crime would be found at Google, the application was still
insufficient because it was required to demonstrate a probable cause nexus for each person
who entered the geofence. Contreras-Sanchez bases his argument on the United States
Supreme Court’s decision in Ybarra v. Illinois, 444 U.S. 85 (1979).
In Ybarra, police executed a warrant to search a tavern and a bartender but used the
warrant to frisk every patron inside the tavern. Id. at 88. The United States Supreme Court
found these searches lacked probable cause because a person’s mere proximity “to others
independently suspected of criminal activity does not, without more, give rise to probable
cause to search that person.” Id. at 91. The Supreme Court further determined:
Where the standard is probable cause, a search or seizure of a person must
be supported by probable cause particularized with respect to that person.
This requirement cannot be undercut or avoided by simply pointing to the
fact that coincidentally there exists probable cause to search or seize another
or to search the premises where the person may happen to be.
Id.
32
The United States Supreme Court, however, has also long recognized that a lawful
search of property may infringe on the privacy interests of an innocent party present at the
time of the search. See Zurcher v. Stanford Daily, 436 U.S. 547, 554 (1978). The general
rule is that “valid warrants may be issued to search any property, whether or not occupied
by a third party, at which there is probable cause to believe that fruits, instrumentalities, or
evidence of a crime will be found.” Id. (emphasis in original). “In situations where the
State does not seek to seize ‘persons’ but only those ‘things’ which there is probable cause
to believe are located on the place to be searched, there is no apparent basis in the language
of the [Fourth] Amendment for also imposing the requirements for a valid arrest—probable
cause to believe that the third party is implicated in the crime.” Id.
Unlike Ybarra, in which law enforcement searched the patrons themselves, in this
case, police sought to search and seize only “things.” Law enforcement established
probable cause that evidence of a crime would be found in location data within the confines
of the geofence warrant which Google stored; the warrant’s incidental infringement on the
privacy interests of other people whose data was captured does not invalidate an otherwise
constitutionally sound warrant. The geofence warrant did not need to demonstrate a
probable cause nexus for each person who entered the geofence.
The warrant application in this case alleged that a murder had occurred, that an
informant told police the perpetrators of the murder owned cell phones, and that Google
stored location data for its users across a broad range of products. This established a fair
probability that Google’s servers would contain evidence of a crime, thus there was
probable cause to issue the geofence warrant.
33
IV.
Finally, we consider Contreras-Sanchez’s claim that the geofence warrant in this
case was not sufficiently particular. Because we hold that this requirement was not met
under the Minnesota Constitution, we have no need to address whether the warrant was
sufficiently particularized under the Fourth Amendment. See Leonard, 943 N.W.2d at 152
n.1; Flowers, 734 N.W.2d at 258. Warrants must “particularly describ[e] the place to be
searched and the person or things to be seized.” Minn. Const. art. I, § 10. The Minnesota
Constitution, like the Fourth Amendment, “by its terms requires particularity in the
warrant, not in the supporting documents.” State v. McNeilly, 6 N.W.3d 161, 176 (Minn.
2024) (emphasis in original). “[The particularity] requirement prohibits law enforcement
from engaging in general or exploratory searches.” State v. Bradford, 618 N.W.2d 782,
795 (Minn. 2000). “The particularity requirement . . . prevents the seizure of one thing
under a warrant describing another. As to what is to be taken, nothing is left to the
discretion of the officer executing the warrant.” McNeilly, 6 N.W.3d at 175 (citation
omitted) (internal quotation marks omitted).
“[W]hen determining whether a clause in a search warrant is sufficiently particular,
the circumstances of the case must be considered, as well as the nature of the crime under
investigation and whether a more precise description is possible under the circumstances.”
Id. at 176 (alteration in original). As we recently noted, “[a] warrant permitting a broad
search can be sufficiently particular if greater specificity is not possible because officers
do not know all the circumstances surrounding the alleged crime.” Sardina-Padilla,
7 N.W.3d at 599. We grant the issuing judge “considerable deference” in determining
34
whether a search warrant is sufficiently particular. See State v. Miller, 666 N.W.2d 703,
713 (Minn. 2003).
We first consider Contreras-Sanchez’s arguments that the geofence warrant was
insufficiently particular as to its geographic area and timeframe, and then address his
argument that the warrant gave officers “unbridled discretion” in seeking additional data
in subsequent steps.
A.
Contreras-Sanchez first argues that the warrant in his case was insufficiently
particular because the geofence covered too broad a geographic area. The geofence
perimeter encompassed an area 65 feet wide by 290 feet long. It included the culvert where
Mandujano’s body was found, a portion of the right of way ditch, and a public road.
Contreras-Sanchez contends that the area could have been limited to avoid the public road
and to solely include the area around the culvert where Mandujano’s body was found.
Considering the circumstances of the investigation, we conclude that the warrant
sufficiently described the place to be searched, which reasonably included a portion of the
adjacent road. At the time they requested the warrant, officers had information that
multiple people were involved in killing Mandujano. It was reasonable to conclude that
one person might have stayed in a vehicle on or near the road to act as a lookout while
others moved the victim. Furthermore, the warrant application noted that only a small
number of vehicles use the road in question and there were only three residences on that
section of the road. Crafting the geofence area to cover a lightly trafficked road was
justified given the circumstances of the investigation.
35
Contreras-Sanchez next contends that the warrant was insufficiently particular
because its timeframe was too long. The geofence warrant authorized data collection
within the geofence for one month, beginning when Mandujano was last seen and ending
when his body was found. After being served with the warrant, Google contacted police
to say that the month-long timeframe would overload its computers and take considerable
time to process. Google suggested providing the data in multiple, smaller timeframes to
enable more efficient processing. Law enforcement narrowed the initial search into two
shorter time periods per Google’s request. Contreras-Sanchez argues that because law
enforcement shortened the initial timeframe into smaller timeframes, it could have been
more particular from the outset.
We disagree. On the facts of this case, a longer timeframe satisfied the particularity
requirement because officers did not know the specific date Mandujano was killed or
moved to the culvert. Officers requested data within a timeframe tailored to the
information they had about the crime: the date Mandujano went missing and the date his
body was discovered. See Sardina-Padilla, 7 N.W.3d at 601 (concluding that a warrant for
approximately three months of defendant’s Facebook activity—including time both before
and after the body was discovered—was sufficiently particular because “it was reasonable
for investigators to believe that some degree of preparation and communication preceded
the crimes” and that content for “a period of time after the crime would yield relevant
evidence”). Law enforcement shortened the timeframe not because it had a more
particularized suspicion about certain dates, but because it was necessary as a practical
36
means of executing the warrant. 15 The warrant was sufficiently particular with respect to
time. 16
B.
Contreras-Sanchez further argues that the warrant was insufficiently particular in its
instructions to police because officers were given “unbridled discretion” to choose the
device IDs for which to seek additional data in steps two and three. Because we conclude
that the warrant’s second step was insufficiently particular, we do not address the question
of step three’s particularity.
In step two, the warrant instructed officers to analyze the step-one data for those
“who may have witnessed or participated in the [s]ubject [o]ffenses.” It further provided
that, “For those accounts identified as relevant to the ongoing investigation through an
analysis of provided records, and upon demand, [Google] shall provide additional location
history.” Specifically, Google was required to provide two hours of additional location
data outside of the geofence, one hour before and one hour after entering the geofence, for
15
Contreras-Sanchez argues that breaking up the month-long timeframe into smaller
periods is also evidence that the warrant insufficiently limited officers’ discretion. As
previously noted, law enforcement crafted these smaller timeframes—timeframes
contained entirely within the month-long timeframe the warrant authorized—in response
to the practical realities of obtaining data from Google. There is no requirement that search
warrants include “a specification of the precise manner in which they are to be executed.”
Dalia v. United States, 441 U.S. 238, 257 (1979).
16
This geofence warrant did authorize collecting data for a longer timeframe than
other geofence cases. See, e.g., Info. Stored at Google, 579 F. Supp. 3d at 72
(185 minutes); Rhine, 652 F. Supp. 3d. at 68 (four-and-a-half hours). This does not change
the fact that the timeframe was reasonable in Contreras-Sanchez’s case given the
circumstances of the investigation.
37
device IDs law enforcement deemed “relevant” with no geographic limits. The warrant
application did not indicate law enforcement would seek, and the warrant did not require,
an additional warrant before obtaining step-two data.
These instructions did not effectively limit police discretion and authorized
impermissible exploratory rummaging in location data. The instructions were deficient in
two ways. First, the warrant allowed officers complete discretion to “analyze [the] location
data to identify users who may have witnessed or participated in the [s]ubject [o]ffenses.”
Second, it left the decision as to which accounts were “relevant” for ongoing investigation
entirely to officers’ discretion. Neither determination was subject to judicial review, which
would have required a showing of probable cause for a step-two search. Although the
officers in this case made a narrow request for data at step two and requested additional
data only for a single device ID, the warrant allowed them to request additional data for all
31 device IDs that passed through the geofence. There was nothing in this warrant to
prevent law enforcement from treating every device ID in the geofence as belonging to a
suspect and rummaging through an additional two hours of location data for all of them. 17
Because there was no requirement to obtain an additional warrant before requesting
additional location data at step two, the warrant allowed law enforcement unfettered
discretion to interpret step-one data and determine what was relevant without judicial
17
The warrant described the purpose of this additional two hours of location data in
step two as “eliminat[ing] outlier points where, from the surrounding data, it becomes clear
the reported point(s) are not indicative of the device actually being within the scope of the
warrant.” The warrant, however, left it to law enforcement’s discretion to actually limit its
use of the data in the way the warrant outlines; it did not prevent law enforcement from
accessing more expansive location data without judicial review.
38
review. Accordingly, we hold that this warrant lacked sufficient particularity under the
Minnesota Constitution. 18
Because the court of appeals concluded the warrant was sufficiently particular, it
did not reach the issue of remedy, including whether the good-faith exception to the
exclusionary rule applies in this context and whether the error was harmless. When we
reverse a court of appeals decision and are thus confronted with a question the court of
appeals did not reach, a remand is typically appropriate. See Dupey v. State, 868 N.W.2d
36, 41 (Minn. 2015); State v. Ross, 732 N.W.2d 274, 276 n.3 (Minn. 2007). We therefore
remand to the court of appeals for proceedings consistent with this opinion.
CONCLUSION
For the foregoing reasons, we reverse the decision of the court of appeals and
remand to the court of appeals for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
Reversed and remanded.
GAÏTAS, J., took no part in the consideration or decision of this case.
18
The language in step two was not sufficiently particular and there was no additional
warrant requirement before obtaining step-two data. We therefore do not consider whether
it is possible to limit police discretion to obtain additional location data with clear
instructions in the warrant, or whether an additional warrant is required at each stage of a
geofence investigation where law enforcement obtains additional information from a
provider storing this type of location data.
39
C O N C U R R E N C E
HUDSON, Chief Justice (concurring).
I join the majority opinion of the court, except to the extent that the majority
suggests that there is no need to stay this case. I write separately to express my view that
it would have behooved our court to stay this case pending the Supreme Court’s decision
in United States v. Chatrie, 136 F.4th 100 (4th Cir. 2025), cert. granted, No. 25-112, 2026
WL 120676 (U.S. Jan. 16, 2026), which is set for argument on April 27, 2026. Although I
question the court’s decision to issue its opinion now, without the benefit of the Supreme
Court’s decision in Chatrie, this procedural concern is mitigated in part by our remand to
the court of appeals. I emphasize here what the majority acknowledges: that there may be
circumstances in which it is appropriate for the court of appeals on remand to consider the
Supreme Court’s decision in Chatrie.
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DISSENT
MCKEIG, Justice (dissenting).
The issue of whether geofence warrants violate the Fourth Amendment is pending
before the United States Supreme Court in Chatrie v. United States, 136 F.4th 100 (4th Cir.
2025), cert. granted, No. 25-112, 2026 WL 120676 (U.S. Jan. 16, 2026). Following an en
banc hearing, the members of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit
adopted different views of whether the reasoning in Carpenter v. United States, 585 U.S.
296 (2018), applied with equal force to geofence warrants. Contrast Chatrie, 136 F.4th at
138–41 (Richardson, J., concurring) (concluding that, unlike the government’s actions in
Carpenter, the execution of the geofence warrant did not constitute a search under the
Fourth Amendment), with Chatrie, 136 F.4th at 115, 120–30 (Wynn, J., concurring)
(concluding that, like the government’s actions in Carpenter, the execution of the geofence
warrant constituted a search under the Fourth Amendment), and Chatrie, 136 F.4th at 144,
148–53 (Berner, J., concurring) (concluding that, under Carpenter, the execution of the
geofence warrant constituted a search under the Fourth Amendment when the government
obtained non-anonymous location data but not when the government obtained anonymous
information unlikely to be traced to a specific individual), and Chatrie, 136 F.4th at 141–
43 (declining to determine whether there was a Fourth Amendment violation and instead
concluding that the exclusionary rule did not apply because the constitutionality of
geofence warrants was unresolved when the warrant was obtained and the purpose of the
D-1
exclusionary rule was not met). Unable to resolve those differences, the members of the
Chatrie court never formed a majority opinion. 1
The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear argument in Chatrie later this month, on
April 27, 2026. In the past, we have cautiously taken “a more restrained approach when
both constitutions use identical or substantially similar language” and have departed from
this restrained approach only after the United States Supreme Court has provided guidance.
City of Golden Valley v. Wiebesick, 899 N.W.2d 152, 157 (Minn. 2017) (providing three
situations where we will depart from the Supreme Court’s guidance when interpreting
substantially similar language); see also Kahn v. Griffin, 701 N.W.2d 815, 824–25 (Minn.
2005) (discussing our approach when interpreting the Minnesota Constitution). And we
generally “do not construe our state constitution as providing more protection for
individual rights than does the federal constitution unless there is a principled basis to do
so.” State v. Ezeka, 946 N.W.2d 393, 402 (Minn. 2020) (citation omitted) (internal
quotation marks omitted).
The court claims there is no need wait for the Supreme Court’s impending guidance
because its analysis rests on an adequate and independent state ground and because the
court has a responsibility to decide the issues presented without further delay, not only for
1
The Fourth Circuit used the word “fractured,” Chatrie, 136 F.4th at 157 (Gregory,
J., dissenting), to describe its reasoning—nine opinions (eight concurrences and one
dissent) accompanied a one-sentence per curiam order in which 14 of 15 judges voted to
affirm the district court’s decision not to exclude the geofence evidence, see Chatrie, 136
F.4th 100. The Chief Judge described this as a “labyrinth” of opinions, representing
“widely divergent views on the intersection of the Fourth Amendment and the
groundbreaking investigative tool at issue here.” Chatrie, 136 F.4th at 108, 101 (Diaz, C.J.,
concurring).
D-2
the parties but for the people of Minnesota. The court’s claim does not withstand scrutiny
for three reasons. First, the court’s discussion of the existing law on electronic data relies
entirely on federal cases, including Carpenter, 585 U.S. 296. 2 Second, appellant Ivan
Contreras-Sanchez has informed the court that he does not object to staying this case
pending the Supreme Court’s decision in Chatrie. Third, the Minnesota Legislature is now
considering the competing public policy concerns of a proposed statute that would prohibit
government entities from requesting or obtaining reverse-location information, similar to
the information here, in non-emergency situations. S.F. 1120, 94th Minn. Leg. 2026 (as
introduced); H.F. 103, 94th Minn. Leg. 2026 (as introduced).
I acknowledge that, because we are evenly divided on whether we should wait for
the Supreme Court’s impending guidance, no stay may issue and the court has the power
to move forward in this case. But in my view, it is highly imprudent to exercise that power
and move forward without the benefit of the impending guidance from the Supreme Court
regarding Carpenter, a case that divided the judges in Chatrie, see, e.g., 136 F.4th at 101
2
The concurrence agrees that the more prudent approach in this case would be to stay
further proceedings pending the Supreme Court’s decision in Chatrie. The concurrence
questions the court’s decision to “issue its opinion now, without the benefit of the Supreme
Court’s decision in Chatrie.” Nevertheless, it concludes that a stay is not required here in
part because the court is remanding to the court of appeals. The court’s remand directs the
court of appeals to consider the State’s argument regarding the good-faith exception to the
warrant requirement and only allows the court of appeals to revisit this court’s probable
cause analysis if the Supreme Court in Chatrie decides that the geofence warrant in that
case lacked probable cause. To be clear, if the Supreme Court in Chatrie decides that the
reasoning of Carpenter, which the court relies upon to reach its decision in Part I, does not
apply to a geofence warrant, nothing in the remand order or this court’s opinion will allow
the court of appeals to revisit that important issue—an issue that fractured the judges in
Chatrie.
D-3
(Diaz, C.J., concurring), and which this court cites 30 times in its opinion, especially when
(1) the court has failed to establish an adequate and independent state ground for its
decision, (2) Contreras-Sanchez does not object to a stay, and (3) the Legislature is now
weighing the relevant public policies. Consequently, I dissent.
A.
In reversing Contreras-Sanchez’s conviction, the court claims it is interpreting
Article I, Section 10, of the Minnesota Constitution independently of the United States
Supreme Court’s articulation of Fourth Amendment protections. I disagree.
The court’s claim that its interpretation of the Minnesota Constitution rests solely
on existing state case law is belied by the court’s in-depth discussion of Carpenter and
Carpenter’s omnipresence throughout the court’s discussion of electronic data in Part I.
The court’s discussion of the existing law on electronic data relies entirely on federal cases,
including Carpenter, which the court mentions 30 times in its opinion. Moreover, in
Pennsylvania v. Labron, 518 U.S. 938, 940–41 (1996), the United States Supreme Court
concluded that citations to state cases that are grounded in federal precedent do not
establish an adequate independent state ground when it is not clear that the federal
precedent was used for guidance alone, rather than compelling the result. All of this court’s
discussion of a person’s expectation of privacy in electronic data is grounded in Carpenter.
It is true that the court cites In re B.H., 946 N.W.2d 860, 869 (Minn. 2020), for the
proposition that cell phones can track a person’s location history with alarming accuracy,
revealing not only the details of a person’s movements, “but through them his familial,
political, professional, religious, and sexual associations.” The parenthetical that follows
D-4
the court’s citation, however, omits the source of the quoted language—Carpenter, 585
U.S. at 311. The court’s citation to State v. Sardina-Padilla, 7 N.W.3d 585, 599 (Minn.
2024), also fails to establish an adequate independent state ground because our decision in
Sardina-Padilla cites in support only B.H., 946 N.W.2d at 869, with a parenthetical quoting
language from Carpenter.
The court also explicitly relies on Carpenter in its assessment of the third-party
doctrine, arguing that the approach in this case and in State v. Leonard, 943 N.W.2d 149,
155 (Minn. 2020), is “similar.”
As the above examples demonstrate, the court’s entire analysis inextricably relies
on the reasoning in Carpenter; therefore, the court has failed to establish an adequate and
independent state ground for its decision. This alone should counsel against moving
forward without the benefit of the impending guidance from the Supreme Court in
Chatrie—a case in which the judges adopted different views of whether the reasoning in
Carpenter applied with equal force to geofence warrants. See, e.g., Chatrie, 136 F.4th at
108, 101 (Diaz, C.J., concurring). When one additionally considers that Contreras-Sanchez
does not object to a stay and that the Legislature is now weighing the relevant public
policies, it is highly imprudent to move forward without the benefit of the impending
guidance from the Supreme Court.
B.
For all the reasons stated above, I decline to reach the merits of the issue that the
court chooses to resolve now. Without deciding the issue, however, I further observe that
D-5
the facts of this case and the decisions by the courts below reinforce that the court’s decision
here is not a foregone conclusion.
Manuel Mandujano went missing on March 25, 2021. About four weeks later, law
enforcement officers found Mandujano’s brutally beaten body in a drainage culvert in rural
Dakota County. His hands were bound behind his back and a nail was embedded in the
heel of one of his feet. An anonymous informant told police they knew someone involved
in the murder of Mandujano, and that multiple individuals participated in the act. The
anonymous informant said that the suspects involved in the murder had cell phones, though
they were unsure which brand of cell phone or which providers the participants used.
On April 29, 2021, law enforcement applied for a geofence warrant to obtain
anonymized location data stored in Google’s internal database housing users’ location
history data (“Google’s internal database”). 3 To be clear, the application did not seek a
warrant to search the contents of Contreras-Sanchez’s cell phone. Instead, the application
sought a warrant to conduct an anonymized search of location data collected from a rural
highway ditch and stored in Google’s internal database where Google stores the location
data that it receives from the cell phones of people who have authorized Google to collect
that data by affirmatively opting in to its collection. 4 The requested geofence warrant
3
“Anonymized location data” in this context refers to geographic information derived
from a device or user that has been processed to remove personally identifiable details so
that the data cannot reasonably be used to identify a specific device or user.
4
The warrant application requested location data “[i]ncluding, but not limited to[,]
GPS, WiFi or Bluetooth, and/or cell tower sourced location history data.” The geographic
parameters specified in the warrant application “encompass[ed] a public roadway and a
D-6
sought anonymized location data collected from a 65-foot by 290-foot rectangular
perimeter in southern Dakota County that encompassed the culvert where Mandujano’s
body was located, a portion of the public road, and a portion of the right-of-way ditch
between March 25 (the day Mandujano went missing) and April 26 (the day his body was
found). 5 The following photograph depicts the rural highway ditch and surrounding area:
portion of a right of way ditch area.” And the warrant application acknowledged that the
location data requested would only be from “individuals who use a wide range of Google
productions [sic].” The warrant application, therefore, acknowledged that any data
returned in response would only be data generated by individuals who had affirmatively
opted into Google’s policies by using Google’s products.
5
In the warrant application, law enforcement asserted that a small number of vehicles
used the public road in question at any given time and there were only 3 residences on that
section of roadway, with the closest located over 1,200 feet away.
At the pretrial evidentiary hearing where Contreras-Sanchez challenged the
geofence warrant, a detective described the remoteness of the location, stating that the road
on which Mandujano’s body was found was seldom traveled. The detective also explained
that Mandujano’s body was found only a half-mile from where the paved road terminated
at a gravel road. The detective gave similar testimony at trial.
D-7
The requested geofence warrant also limited the release of this narrowly focused
location data using a three-step process. After reviewing the application, a district court
issued the requested warrant.
After Google received the geofence warrant, it complied with step one of the
authorized process, which required Google to provide the investigating officers anonymous
user identification numbers (device IDs) for every electronic device that reported its
presence within the geofence perimeter between the date Mandujano went missing and the
D-8
date his body was found. 6 The anonymized step-one data revealed that during the seven-
day period between March 25, 2021, and March 31, 2021, only 12 electronic devices
reported their location in the geofence perimeter. 7 Eleven of the devices only reported their
presence in the geofence perimeter once. The officers took no further action regarding
those devices. The 12th device, however, reported its location in the geofence perimeter
46 times during a 10-minute period on March 29, 2021. Having reasonably determined
that the 12th device was relevant to the ongoing investigation, the officers proceeded to
step two of the process authorized under the geofence warrant.
In accordance with step two, Google provided the investigating officers with
additional anonymized location data from Google’s internal database for the 12th device.
More specifically, Google disclosed all the anonymized location data from the 12th device
for the 60 minutes before and after the device reported its location within the geofence
perimeter. The purpose of this step was to eliminate outlier data points where it became
clear the device was not within the scope of the warrant. The anonymized step-two location
data reported by the 12th device revealed that the device was present at a gas station 40
6
In its initial response to the investigating officers, Google noted that the information
did not include any information regarding cell-sourced location coordinates because the
specified search area was too small for such information to be accurate.
7
Although the timeframe specified in the search warrant was from the date that
Mandujano’s family last saw him (March 25, 2021) until the date that Mandujano’s body
was found (April 26, 2021), Google contacted the warrant applicant and asked him to
narrow the timespan so Google could process the data faster. In response to Google’s
request, the warrant applicant narrowed the timeframe down to two seven-day periods:
March 25–31, 2021, and April 1–7, 2021. Because all the relevant evidence was obtained
during the first seven-day period, the second seven-day period is not relevant here.
D-9
minutes before it reported its presence in the geofence perimeter. The gas station provided
surveillance video to the investigating officers, which showed four persons of interest at
the gas station. An investigating officer recognized one individual and one vehicle from
the ongoing investigation. Based on the anonymized step-two data, the investigating
officers moved to the third step in the process authorized by the geofence warrant.
Although the third step in the process authorized by the geofence warrant already
required Google to provide the investigating officers information identifying the owner of
the 12th device without obtaining another warrant, the investigating officers here
nevertheless applied for a second warrant. This second warrant directed Google to provide
the identifying information based on the information obtained during the officers’
investigation, including the anonymized first- and second-step location data. After
reviewing the application, a district court issued the second warrant. When Google
received the second warrant, Google identified the 12th device as belonging to Contreras-
Sanchez.
Police spoke with Contreras-Sanchez several times before ultimately arresting him
in November 2021. In an interview with police, Contreras-Sanchez admitted participating
in the murder of Mandujano and showed police videos on his phone depicting a badly
beaten Mandujano. In one video, Contreras-Sanchez asked the victim in Spanish, “that’s
what you get for being a snitch, right?”
The State charged Contreras-Sanchez with second-degree intentional murder and
second-degree unintentional felony murder. Contreras-Sanchez pleaded not guilty and
demanded a jury trial.
D-10
Before trial, Contreras-Sanchez moved to suppress the 10 minutes of location data
collected from Google’s internal database that showed his presence in the geofence
perimeter. Contreras-Sanchez argued that all geofence warrants are per se unconstitutional
general warrants and, in the alternative, the geofence warrant in his case lacked probable
cause, was not sufficiently particular, and was overbroad. The State argued that Contreras-
Sanchez failed to establish that he had a reasonable expectation of privacy in the ten
minutes of anonymized location data collected from the geofence perimeter and stored in
Google’s internal database. In the alternative, the State argued that the geofence warrant
here was supported by probable cause and was sufficiently particular.
On May 17, 2022, the district court held a contested suppression hearing. The
hearing provided Contreras-Sanchez an opportunity to present evidence to satisfy his
burden to prove that he exhibited an actual subjective expectation of privacy in the location
data collected from the geofence perimeter, as required to prove there was a search under
the Fourth Amendment or Article I, Section 10. Kyllo v. United States, 533 U.S. 27, 33
(2001) (“[A] Fourth Amendment search occurs when the government violates a subjective
expectation of privacy that society recognizes as reasonable.”); Leonard, 943 N.W.2d at
156 (“Under Article I, Section 10, a search occurs when law enforcement intrudes upon an
individual’s subjective expectation of privacy that society is prepared to recognize as
reasonable.”). Contreras-Sanchez chose not to testify at the hearing. He failed to present
testimony from any Google employee on whether the affirmative opt-in choice to location
information storage was confusing or illusory. He also failed to provide any testimony
whatsoever from a Google employee, law enforcement, or an expert witness regarding data
D-11
privacy or technology. In fact, Contreras-Sanchez did not call any witnesses or submit any
documents at the suppression hearing. The State presented testimony from four law
enforcement officers who described the investigation, the process of obtaining the geofence
warrant, and the process of analyzing the data obtained through the geofence warrant.
Unsurprisingly, none of the law enforcement officers testified about Contreras-Sanchez’s
subjective expectation of privacy in the ten minutes of location data collected from the
geofence perimeter and stored in Google’s internal database, or about whether the
affirmative opt-in choice was confusing or illusory. After considering the evidence
presented at the suppression hearing, the district court denied Contreras-Sanchez’s motion
to suppress. Following a jury trial, Contreras-Sanchez was convicted of second-degree
intentional murder and the district court imposed a 480-month sentence.
On appeal, Contreras-Sanchez argued that the district court abused its discretion
when it denied his motion to suppress. The court of appeals concluded that even if it
assumed “without deciding that Contreras-Sanchez had a reasonable expectation of privacy
in his anonymous location-history data,” he was not entitled to any relief because “the
geofence warrant passe[d] constitutional muster with respect to its authorization of the
seizure of anonymous location-history information.” State v. Contreras-Sanchez, 5 N.W.3d
151, 163, 162 (Minn. App. 2024).
Particularly against this factual record and the holdings by the courts below, it would
have been prudent for the court to wait for the Supreme Court’s decision in Chatrie before
reversing both the court of appeals and the district court.
D-12
* * *
In sum, I am deeply concerned by the court’s decision to issue our opinion now,
without waiting for the impending guidance of the Supreme Court in Chatrie, which is
scheduled for oral argument later this month. I acknowledge that, because we are evenly
divided on whether we should wait for the Supreme Court’s guidance, no stay may issue
and the court has the power to move forward here. But in my view, it is highly imprudent
to move forward without the benefit of the impending guidance from the United States
Supreme Court regarding Carpenter, a case that divided the judges in Chatrie and which
this court cites 30 times in its opinion, especially when (1) the court has failed to establish
an adequate and independent state ground for its decision, (2) Contreras-Sanchez does not
object to a stay, and (3) the Legislature is now weighing the relevant public policies. This
is particularly true where—as illustrated by the facts of this case and the decisions of the
courts below—the court’s decision here is not a foregone conclusion.
For the reasons stated above, I dissent.
MOORE, III, Justice (dissenting).
I join in the dissent of Justice McKeig.
D-13
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