Golden Gate Legal Review publishes commentary and analysis on the constitutional and statutory questions moving through the federal courts and the California legislature — privacy and the Fourth Amendment, housing, criminal justice, immigration, labor, and the law of emerging technology. The Review offers analysis, not legal advice.
The first geofence-warrant case to reach the Supreme Court was decided on June 29, 2026: acquiring a person's Google location data is a Fourth Amendment search, the Court held, leaving the warrant's reasonableness for the Fourth Circuit on remand.
A geofence warrant searches a crowd to find a suspect, inverting probable cause and particularity. How Carpenter, the Chatrie circuit split, and the Supreme Court's June 2026 decision settle whether the acquisition is a search — and what the Court left open.
| Case / Bill Reference | Subject | Status | Last Action |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chatrie v. United States (No. 25-112)U.S. Supreme Court · Argued Apr 27, 2026 | Privacy | DECIDED | 06.29.26 |
| Cal. AB 1157 (Affordable Rent Act)Cal. Assembly · Judiciary Cmte | Housing | FAILED — DIED IN COMMITTEE | 01.31.26 |
| Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act (H.R. 4639)U.S. Congress · H.R. 4639 (118th) | Privacy | PASSED HOUSE 2024 · REINTRODUCED 2026 | 04.17.24 |
Recent
Commentary
The Court Lifts the Cap on Coordinated Party Spending
The Supreme Court has struck down one of the last surviving spending limits in federal campaign-finance law. On June 30, 2026, in National Republican Senatorial Committee v. Federal…
AB 1157 Stalls: California’s Rent Cap Holds for 2026
AB 1157 would have cut California's rent cap to 2% plus CPI, but it died in committee in January 2026. The existing 5%-plus-CPI cap under Civ. Code 1947.12 stands.
ACA 6 Returns Forced-Prison-Labor Question to the 2026 Ballot
California's ACA 6 would delete the constitution's punishment exception after Prop 6 failed in 2024, as AB 247 raises incarcerated-firefighter wages to $7.25.
The Third-Party Doctrine Meets the Cloud
The third-party doctrine once seemed tidy: share information with a bank or a phone company, and you forfeit any expectation of privacy in it. Cloud computing has made that premise hard to sustain.