MINNEAPOLIS — A divided Minnesota Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that state law enforcement violated the rights of a Minneapolis man convicted of murder because a warrant that obtained data from Google to identify him as a suspect was overly broad.

Lawsuits around the country have tested the constitutionality of geofence warrants — which law enforcement use to gather digital data when they know the general location and time of a crime but do not have a suspect — including Chatrie v. United States, which is set to be argued before the U.S. Supreme Court later this month.

This was the first constitutional analysis of geofence warrants by the state Supreme Court, and Justice Sarah Hennesy wrote the majority opinion, though the decision to rule on the case before the U.S. Supreme Court issues its opinion was questioned by other justices.

Hennesy wrote that Google holds a vast amount of “highly sensitive information about deeply personal activities.” That potentially includes a person’s “familial, political, professional, religious and sexual associations.” The fact that the government can obtain, through Google, a “comprehensive catalogue of a person’s physical movements recorded by the phone they carry is a privacy concern.”

The court determined that obtaining such data constitutes a search under the Fourth Amendment and requires a judicial warrant. The state had argued that obtaining Google user location data did not require a warrant. The court also concluded that while geofence warrants are constitutional, the process used to obtain data in this case was not.

In 2021, a geofence warrant was used to identify Ivan Contreras-Sanchez as a suspect in the killing of Manuel Mandujano. Contreras-Sanchez was found guilty of second-degree murder in Hennepin County District Court in 2022 and sentenced to 40 years in prison.

Mandujano’s family had reported him missing to the Minneapolis Police Department after the family was told by people at a homeless encampment that Mandujano had gotten into a fight and was hit over the head with a shovel and killed. His body was eventually found in a drainage culvert in Castle Rock Township, his hands bound behind his back.

A judge granted officers a geofence warrant that demanded Google provide cellphone data for any device registered with the company that entered a rectangular boundary, 65 feet by 290 feet, near where Mandujano’s body had been found.

Initially police asked for all cellphones that entered that boundary over the course of a month, from when Mandujano was reported missing until his body was found. Google responded that processing that much data would overload its systems. Law enforcement narrowed the timeframe to two seven-day periods.

In total, 19 devices entered the geofence boundary during those 14 days. All of the devices were in the area briefly except for one phone that was there for 10 minutes.

The warrant also demanded that if the data led law enforcement to believe any of the device activity indicated someone may have witnessed or participated in the murder, Google had to provide location data for that device for 60 minutes before and after it entered the geofence area.

Officers requested that data for the device that was in the area for 10 minutes but did not seek an additional warrant.

Google provided the location data, and it showed the device at a gas station within the 60-minute window before it entered the geofence boundary. Surveillance footage from the gas station showed four “persons of interest,” including someone that an officer recognized from the investigation.

Police then applied for a second warrant for that same cellphone seeking 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 the device.

A judge granted the warrant. Google identified the device as belonging to Contreras-Sanchez. He admitted to taking part in the murder under police questioning, but later challenged the constitutionality of how his location data was used to identify him as a suspect.

Hennessy writes that Contreras-Sanchez’s Fourth Amendment rights were violated when Google provided law enforcement with the 60 minutes of data outside of the geofence location for any phone identified as belonging to a potential witness or suspect.

The warrant “allowed police unchecked discretion to determine which device IDs inside the geofence they would subject to an expanded search for additional location information,” Hennesy wrote.

She added that because the warrant allowed law enforcement to obtain user data without geographic limitations, it “authorized impermissible exploratory rummaging in location data.”

“There was nothing in this warrant to prevent law enforcement from treating every device ID in the geofence as belonging to a suspect,” Hennesy wrote.

That lack of specificity is what led the court to reverse a prior Minnesota Court of Appeals decision that upheld Contreras-Sanchez’s conviction and ruled the geofence warrant was sufficient. The case will now be sent back to determine whether this constitutional violation requires a new trial for Contreras-Sanchez.

Justices Paul Thissen and Karl Procaccini signed on to the majority opinion. Chief Justice Natalie Hudson’s concurrence and the dissent, written by Justice Anne McKeig and signed on by Justice Gordon Moore III, both questioned issuing the order before the U.S. Supreme Court issues its ruling Chatrie v. United States. Justice Theodora Gaïtas did not participate in the decision.

McKeig listed three reason the state Supreme Court should have waited to issue an opinion: because the court relied extensively on federal cases for its opinion and failed to show a state ground for its decision; because Contreras-Sanchez did not object to staying the case and waiting for the U.S. Supreme Court; and because the Minnesota Legislature is considering a statute that would limit the government from obtaining this kind of location information in nonemergency situations.

But the majority argued the court had a responsibility to the people of Minnesota to decide the case without delay.

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