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A bipartisan group of Minnesota lawmakers has proposed a bill seeking to ban court orders that allow law enforcement to collect data that reveals which cellphones and other devices were near a crime scene at a specific time.
Democratic state Sen. Erin Maye Quade introduced a Senate bill to ban such orders in most cases, and Sens. Omar Fateh, also a Democrat, and Eric Lucero, a Republican, joined as original sponsors.
The bill would also allow anyone whose information was obtained during the search to sue authorities.
Lawmakers argue the orders should be banned except in emergency situations. They said reverse location orders, sometimes called “geofencing” or “trawling” orders, are overly broad and violate Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures.
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Lawmakers argue the orders should be banned except in emergency situations. (Getty Images)
Critics of the orders say authorities can collect data on thousands of people near a particular area, including those who attended an event that might be of interest to authorities, such as a protest.
“We believe we have to balance our constitutional rights and public safety so that we are not essentially sending law enforcement to look for a needle in a haystack by exponentially increasing the size of the haystack,” Maye Quade said during a March 9 hearing.
Law enforcement groups, including the Minnesota Police Chiefs Association and the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, maintain that the bill is too broad, although both have suggested a willingness to negotiate with lawmakers on data privacy issues.
“We recognize and share the Legislature's commitment to protecting individual privacy and civil liberties. However, as written, this bill would impose an outright ban on investigative tools that are legal, court-supervised, and, in many cases, critical to solving serious crimes and protecting public safety,” the Minnesota Association of Chiefs of Police said in a letter to lawmakers.
Senate lawmakers first discussed the bill in the Senate Judiciary and Public Safety Committee on March 9. House lawmakers discussed a companion bill, originally proposed by Rep. Sandra Feist, a Democrat, in the Civil Law and Judicial Finance Committee on Feb. 24.
This comes amid an ongoing nationwide case, in which the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in April on the constitutionality of reverse tracing orders.
Between 2018 and 2020, the number of reverse trace orders in Minnesota increased from 22 to 173.
The Senate bill would allow anyone whose information was obtained during the search to sue authorities. (Kurt “CyberGuy” Knutsson)
In 2023, Google said it would stop storing location data in a way that made it susceptible to reverse location warrant requests. In July last year, the company said that all location history data previously stored on its servers had been deleted or moved to on-device storage.
But groups like the American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation have raised concerns about whether that change is enough.
The warrants appear to continue to be used in Minnesota, as law enforcement groups argue they play a key role in resolving investigations.
Bureau of Criminal Apprehension Superintendent Drew Evans said a ban on such warrants “would have a significant detrimental effect on public safety in Minnesota.”
“There are numerous examples of investigations of cases where reverse location data has saved lives, even recently,” Evans said in a letter to lawmakers, although he added that he supports “reasonable safeguards for data privacy protection” and would be “more than willing to collaborate on potential solutions to implement more safeguards while preserving such an important technological tool.”
As written, the Senate bill would prohibit court orders to collect information on devices that search for a specific keyword, phrase or website. It would also prohibit similar collection of GPS coordinates, cell towers and Wi-Fi connectivity data.
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Minneapolis police in tactical gear arrive on the street in downtown Minneapolis as protesters gather on January 17, 2026 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. (Jim Vondruska/Getty Images)
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Lucero said during the March 9 hearing that the bill should not be seen as contrary to law enforcement, arguing that it promotes pro-constitutional principles.
“We just want to make sure those time-tested principles are protected in the new digital realm,” Lucero said.
Lucero referenced the Fourth Amendment, which protects against unreasonable searches and seizures unless a warrant specifies a particular place 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.
