Supreme Court Term Cases that Impact Activists

The Supreme Court’s most recent term delivered many striking opinions.[1] With a total of 68 opinions handed down since October, [2] it can be overwhelming to keep track of how the legal landscape is shifting (and devolving). CLDC has compiled summaries of some of the Court’s newest opinions that are relevant for political activists. These cases touch many of our civil liberties, including voting, our First Amendment freedoms to associate (and organize), our Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable searches and seizures, and the birth right of U.S. citizenship. These cases also impact lawsuits brought to enforce our rights against states and the federal government.

Geofence Warrants: Chatrie v. United States[3]

Takeaway for Activists:

A geofence warrant used by cops and government agencies to track cellphone locations and other data is a search subject to the Fourth Amendment.

A geofence warrant is a tool used by law enforcement to track the location of all devices in a certain area at a specific time.[4] Initially, Google hands over anonymous data, assigning each device a unique identifier. Once law enforcement narrows down the list, however, they can request identifying information for suspicious devices. These geofence warrants were operating outside the normal Fourth Amendment search framework until Chatrie v. United States.

In Chatrie, police issued a geofence warrant to track location data for all cellphones in the radius of a bank robbery for a two-hour span. Once the police narrowed the list down to a few suspects, Google gave the police the suspects’ identifying information. One of the suspects, Okella Chatrie, was eventually charged for committing the crime.

The Supreme Court held that the geofence warrant procedure is a search under the Fourth Amendment and remanded the case back to the Court of Appeals to apply the proper Fourth Amendment framework to decide whether the search was reasonable. The Supreme Court held that we have a “legitimate expectation of privacy” in our location history that Google collects because the location history used for geofence warrants is incredibly precise, covers an unlimited amount of people at one time, and is readily used by consumers for their own benefit. All of these characteristics of a geofence warrant far exceed law enforcement’s traditional surveillance capabilities and, thus, far exceed a person’s expectations for privacy in public.

The Supreme Court rejected the government’s argument that a geofence warrant isn’t a search because the warrant’s scope is, initially, incredibly brief. According to the government, a person cannot reasonably expect privacy in the two-hour window because the data collected would not disclose enough about a person’s private life. The Supreme Court concluded that even a two-hour window into a person’s life can reveal much about a person’s life that they wish to keep private, including medical or legal visits, church attendance, or political activity. The Supreme Court also rejected the government’s argument, referred to as the “third-party doctrine,” that we lost our legitimate expectation of privacy once we allowed Google to have our location history[5].

Even though the Supreme Court held that geofence warrants are a search under the Fourth Amendment, the Court of Appeals still has several opportunities to decide that the geofence warrant was still lawful. The Court of Appeals could decide that the search was reasonable or it could hold that the “good faith” exception for unreasonable searches applies.

Birthright Citizenship: Trump v. Barbara[6]

Takeaway for Activists:

By a 6-3 majority, birthright citizenship stands, under the Fourteenth Amendment and federal law, as it has been understood since before this nation was founded. Without this ruling, hundreds and thousands of children born in the US to non-us parents would be deportable to a country they have never known.

According to the Supreme Court, birthright citizenship first arose through English and American common law, where any free person born “within the dominion” of a sovereign had protection by the sovereign. In other words, a child owed an allegiance to the sovereign that protected the child at their birth. This idea only changed when Southern states started denying citizenship to emancipated Black Americans. This idea expanded to all states when the Supreme Court decided the infamous Dred Scott v. Sandford opinion. Eventually, this new rule was overridden, first, by the Civil Rights Act of 1866[7] and, second, by the Fourteenth Amendment’s Citizenship Clause.[8]

After explaining the history of birthright citizenship and the events that led up to the Fourteenth Amendment, the Supreme Court next turned to the text of the Citizenship Clause to reinforce that birthright citizenship still applies as commonly understood. For the Supreme Court, the important phrase is “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States. The Supreme Court concluded that the language was intentional and intended to be interpreted with its legal definition. The legal definition of jurisdiction, as it relates to sovereign power, means anyone subject to the “power of governing or legislating” of the United States. Thus, anyone born or naturalized in the United States who is subject to the power of the United States, with narrow exceptions, are citizens of the United States.

The Supreme Court also explained that the exceptions in the Citizenship Clause are “carefully defined” to include only explicit foreign nationals and specific Indigenous tribes. The Supreme Court again highlighted that these exceptions fit the ordinary legal meaning of the terms and mirror the common law. Therefore, the Supreme Court held that American-born children of immigrants (either here temporarily or unlawfully) are included in the Citizenship Clause and do not fall under the exception for foreign nationals. The Supreme Court held that those children do not fall under the foreign national exception because no foreign sovereign has “‘any motive for wishing’ them outside this Nation’s authority,” which is a key requirement for the foreign national exception.

Finally, the Supreme Court rejected the government’s (and the dissent’s) argument that the meaning of allegiance, as understood in the common law requirement for citizenship, had changed before the Fourteenth Amendment was passed, and, thus, the Birthright Citizenship clause is more restrictive for citizenship. The Supreme Court held that the government’s and dissent’s standard for citizenship – domicile – has almost no evidentiary support. The Supreme Court, after rejecting their proposed “evidence,” went back to highlighting the history of the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and the Fourteenth Amendment to affirm that birthright citizenship applies to all but a very narrow group of people in the United States.

Prior Convictions and 1983 Lawsuits: Olivier v. City of Brandon[9]

Takeaway for Activists:

As long as you are not challenging your conviction or seeking money damages for being convicted under the law, you may file suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 to challenge the constitutionality of a law you were arrested under.

A unanimous Supreme Court held that someone who has been previously convicted under a statute may challenge the statute’s constitutionality under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 as long as the person is not looking to challenge their prior conviction to get released from custody or get monetary damages for being convicted under the law. Essentially, if a person is challenging the constitutionality of a law they were convicted of to gain “forward-looking relief,” mainly a declaratory judgment that the law is unconstitutional and an injunction from the law being enforced in the future, § 1983 is available as a remedy. This case clarified the Supreme Court’s decision in Heck v. Humphrey, which held that a person cannot use § 1983 to challenge the validity of a prior conviction to get released from custody or ask for monetary damages for the unlawful conviction.[10] Since Heck v. Humphrey, courts have conflicted as to whether Heck applies to parties who are only seeking future relief like a determination that a law is unconstitutional and an injunction from enforcing the law in the future. The Supreme Court held that Heck v. Humphrey does not apply, so any person who has been previously convicted under a law may still challenge its constitutionality under § 1983 as long as they are not attempting to attack their conviction.

Standing in Federal Court to Challenge State Subpoenas: First Choice Women’s Resource Centers, Inc. v. Davenport[11]

Takeaway for Activists:

Organizations may sue in federal court to challenge state subpoenas seeking membership or donation lists, and such organizations have standing to sue even if the subpoenas are not yet enforceable by a court order.

After a nonprofit was served a subpoena by the state attorney general, a unanimous Supreme Court also decided that the organization could challenge the constitutionality of the subpoena in federal court. This subpoena demanded the nonprofit to hand over specific documents related to donors, including names, phone numbers, and addresses. The nonprofit sued the attorney general in federal court to prevent the attorney general from enforcing the subpoena. The nonprofit also challenged the constitutionality of the subpoena, arguing that the subpoena chilled the organization’s and its donors’ First Amendment right to association by discouraging donors who may only wish to give money anonymously. The nonprofit gathered declarations from anonymous donors who stated that they would have been less likely to donate money to the nonprofit had they known that their information could be released to the attorney general. The federal district court dismissed the lawsuit, holding that, since the subpoena had no corresponding court order compelling the nonprofit to comply with the subpoena, the nonprofit did not have standing to sue in federal court. The federal district court also brought up federalism concerns since the attorney general had sued in state court over a state subpoena.

The Supreme Court opinion focused entirely on standing (whether you are the right plaintiff to bring a lawsuit), but this is still a big win for nonprofits and organizations that want additional legal remedies to protect their donor information and constitutional rights from government overreach. The Supreme Court held that a subpoena, even without a corresponding court order demanding compliance, can injure an organization and gives it standing to sue in federal court. Because the subpoena “commanded” the organization to hand over the documents and threatened the nonprofit with separate legal consequences if it did not comply, it did not matter that the subpoena was not “self-enforceable.” The threat of these legal consequences can be enough to frighten organizations into compliance and discourage donors from supporting those causes.

The Supreme Court also reinforced that subpoenas like the one at issue in this case can chill First Amendment rights to association even when the subpoenaing agency promises to keep the information private and not disclose the information to the public. The Supreme Court explained that donors may be discouraged from donating to an organization even if their private information is only going to a government agency. The Supreme Court also highlighted its own precedent and pointed out the long history of hostile states that attempted to harm progressive organizations like the ACLU and NAACP with identical or similar tactics.

Finally, the Supreme Court rejected the attorney general’s argument that the nonprofit was not injured by the subpoena because the attorney general’s subpoena left donor information alone when the donors used a specific website to donate. The Supreme Court held that organizations are still injured even when some avenues for donor anonymity remain. The Supreme Court also held that this practice discourages organizations from associating in any way that the state does not approve of, which is exactly what our First Amendment right to association was meant to prevent.

Overall, the Supreme Court made a few rulings that strengthen our rights as political activists. First, the Supreme Court declared that geofence warrants are a search, incorporating them under our Fourth Amendment jurisprudence and placing a barrier to those warrants being used in our criminal legal system. Second, the Supreme Court upheld birthright citizenship, preventing the government from attempting to deport children of non-U.S. citizens who may have spent their entire lives in the United States. Third, the Supreme Court clarified the restrictive ruling in Heck v. Humphrey, expanding § 1983 as a remedy to challenge unconstitutional laws even if you have been previously convicted under the unconstitutional law. Finally, the Supreme Court approved a federal cause of action for nonprofits and organizations who are targeted by state subpoenas to gain their membership and donor information, even if the subpoena is not self-enforceable by law.  The rest of the opinions issued this term…. not so great and a story for another day!

[1] https://www.britannica.com/topic/Major-Supreme-Court-Cases-from-the-2025-26-Term

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_term_opinions_of_the_Supreme_Court_of_the_United_States

[3] https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/25-112_0am4.pdf

[4] https://govfacts.org/tech-innovation/digital-rights-privacy/digital-surveillance/geofence-warrants-how-police-use-your-phones-location-to-solve-crimes/

[5] But also, consider 3^rd party data brokers who acquire your private info as a condition of using a ‘free’ app, and then hand it over to the government without a warrant.

[6] https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/25-365_4hdj.pdf

[7] https://www.owleyes.org/text/civil-rights-act-of-1866/read/text-of-the-act#root-2

[8] https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-14/

[9] https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/24-993_10n2.pdf

[10] https://www.oyez.org/cases/1993/93-6188

[11] https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/24-781_pok0.pdf