Minnesota lawmakers are considering legislation to prohibit “reverse location warrants,” also known as “geofence” or “dragnet” warrants, after a judge’s order can allow police to collect data tied to cellphones and other devices at a specific place and time and then work backward to identify suspects. The proposal is gaining attention as the U.S. Supreme Court weighs the constitutionality of similar warrants nationwide.
During a Senate hearing on March 9, Sen. Erin Maye Quade described the issue as one of balancing constitutional rights and public safety. She said lawmakers have to “balance our constitutional rights and public safety so that we’re not essentially sending law enforcement in to search for a needle in a haystack by exponentially increasing the size of the haystack,” according to testimony reported in the case coverage.
Maye Quade proposed the Senate bill along with Sen. Eric Lucero and Sen. Omar Fateh. Under the bill’s approach, reverse location warrants would be barred in most cases, with an exception for “sudden emergency” situations. The proposal also would restrict warrants aimed at information tied to a specific keyword, phrase or website, and would prevent similar searches for GPS coordinates, cell tower data and WiFi connectivity data.
Supporters of the ban say the warrants can cast too broad a net. They argue that the method can gather information on thousands of people who attended an event of interest to law enforcement, including gatherings such as protests or funerals.
Opponents, including the Minnesota Chiefs of Police Association and the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, argued that the bill as written is too broad. The coverage said the groups support negotiations with lawmakers over data privacy safeguards and described how the warrants are used in practice—while also noting the legal and procedural requirements that govern them.
Police officials say digital evidence is often central to modern investigations, particularly when investigators do not know who committed a crime. Police chiefs association President Jay Henthorne told lawmakers that reverse location warrants can generate leads in cases that might otherwise be unsolvable, and he said “Removing this tool will make it significantly harder to identify suspects in serious crimes.”
Henthorne also said the warrants require probable cause and a judge’s signature, and that the data provided is used to begin an investigation through leads that must be corroborated with additional evidence and often other warrants. He compared that function to “a tip that helps investigators know where to look next.”
The debate is occurring amid court scrutiny of the broader practice. The AP report said the Minnesota bills are being considered as the Supreme Court prepares to hear oral arguments in April in an ongoing case about reverse location warrants. In Minnesota, Sen. Lucero, a Republican, said the proposal should be viewed as pro-constitutional rather than anti-law enforcement.
Lucero said at the March 9 hearing that lawmakers want to ensure “those time tested principles are protected in the new digital realm,” and he argued that “Reverse search warrants are the antithesis of that.” He tied his position to the Fourth Amendment’s protections against unreasonable searches and seizures, including the requirement that warrants specify particular places and things to be seized.
The report also pointed to growth in the use of the warrants in Minnesota. Between 2018 and 2020, the number of reverse location warrants rose from 22 to 173—described in the coverage as a 686% increase—based on data tied to requests that resemble those received by Google.
In addition, the coverage said Google announced in 2023 that it would stop storing location data in a way that would make it susceptible to reverse location warrant requests, and that by July 2025 the company said previous location history data stored on Google servers had been deleted or moved to device storage only. The American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation were among the groups described as casting doubt on whether the change is sufficient.
In a March 5 letter, BCA Superintendent Drew Evans said an outright ban would “have a major detrimental effect on public safety in Minnesota,” while also saying he supports “reasonable safeguards for data privacy protections.” Evans wrote that there are “numerous examples of case investigations where reverse location data has saved lives, even just recently,” and said he would be “more than willing to collaborate on possible solutions to implement more safeguards while still preserving such an important technological tool.”
The coverage said a BCA spokesperson told MinnPost that the agency does not store search-warrant data in a way that shows how many reverse location warrants were used in recent years. The report said prosecutors and police chiefs have also argued that the warrants can be critical in complex investigations even when investigators do not know a suspect at the outset.
Senate lawmakers first discussed the bill in the Senate Judiciary and Public Safety Committee on March 9. House lawmakers considered a companion bill proposed by Rep. Sandra Feist in the Judiciary Finance and Civil Law Committee on Feb. 24.