Minnesota lawmakers propose bipartisan ban on reverse location warrants

A bipartisan group of Minnesota lawmakers has proposed a bill that aims to ban arrest warrants, which allow law enforcement to collect data that reveals what cellphones and other devices were near the scene of a crime at a given time.

Democratic state Sen. Erin Maye Quade has introduced a Senate bill that would ban these permits in most cases; Sen. Omar Fateh, also a Democrat, and Republican Eric Lucero also joined as original sponsors.

The bill would also allow anyone whose information was obtained during a search to sue law enforcement.

Lawmakers argue arrest warrants should be banned except in emergencies. They said adverse location orders, sometimes called “geofence” or “dragnet” orders, were too broad and violated Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures.

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Critics of the search warrant say authorities could collect data on thousands of people near a particular area, including those attending an event that might attract law enforcement attention, such as a protest.

“We believe we must balance our constitutional rights and public safety so that we are not sending law enforcement looking for a needle in a haystack by exponentially increasing the size of the haystack,” Maye Quade said at the March 9 hearing.

Law enforcement agencies, including the Minnesota Association of Chiefs of Police and the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, argue the bill is too broad, but both tout a willingness to negotiate with lawmakers over data privacy concerns.

“We recognize and share the Legislature’s commitment to protecting individual privacy and civil liberties. However, as drafted, this bill would impose an outright ban on legal, court-supervised, and investigative tools that, in many cases, are critical to solving serious crimes and protecting public safety,” the Minnesota Association of Chiefs of Police wrote in a letter to lawmakers. he said.

Senate lawmakers first debated the bill in the Senate Judiciary and Public Safety Committee on March 9. House lawmakers debated the companion bill, first proposed by Democratic Rep. Sandra Feist in the Judicial Finance and Civil Law Committee on Feb. 24.

This comes amid an ongoing national case in which the U.S. Supreme Court is set to hear oral arguments in April on the constitutionality of adverse location orders.

Between 2018 and 2020, the number of adverse location permits in Minnesota increased from 22 to 173.

The Senate bill would allow anyone whose information was obtained during a search to sue law enforcement. (Kurt “CyberGuy” Knutsson)

Google has said it will stop storing location data in 2023, which would make it susceptible to reverse location order requests. In July last year, the company announced that all location history data previously stored on its servers had been deleted or moved to on-device storage.

But groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation have raised concerns about whether this change is enough.

Arrest warrants appear to still be used in Minnesota, as law enforcement officials claim they play a key role in solving investigations.

Bureau of Criminal Apprehension Superintendent Drew Evans said a ban on these warrants would “have a major detrimental impact on public safety in Minnesota.”

“There are numerous case study examples where reverse location data has saved lives, even recently,” Evans said in a letter to lawmakers, but added that he supported “reasonable safeguards to protect data privacy” and “would be more than willing to collaborate on possible solutions to implement greater security measures while protecting such an important technological tool.”

As written, the Senate bill would ban warrants from collecting information about devices searching for a particular keyword, phrase or website. It would also ban similar collection of GPS coordinates, cell tower and Wi-Fi connection data.

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Minneapolis police in tactical gear arrive on a street in downtown Minneapolis as protesters gather on January 17, 2026 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. (Jim Vondruska/Getty Images)

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Lucero said at the March 9 hearing that the bill should not be seen as contrary to the implementation of the law, arguing that it promotes pro-constitutional principles.

“We just want to make sure that these time-tested principles are preserved in the new digital space,” Lucero said.

Lucero cited the Fourth Amendment, which protects against unreasonable searches and seizures unless a warrant specifies a specific location and the person or thing to be seized.

“Reverse search warrants are the antithesis of that,” he said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.