GAINING MOMENTUM

Sometimes, all it takes is one person recognizing that your fight matters.

For Jaquate Simpson, the fight for justice and constitutional privacy has been long, difficult, and largely fought from behind prison walls. He has continued to challenge what he believes was an unconstitutional form or real-time cell-phone surveillance — despite the enormous obstacles that come with pursuing a complex federal constitutional issue as a pro se litigant.

Now, something significant has happened.

On September 18, 2026, Nathan Freed Wessler, on behalf of ACLU amici, filed a response in the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit identifying Jaquate Simpson’s case as presenting issues similar to United States v. Chatrie.

That recognition matters.

SOMEONE OUTSIDE THE PRISON WALLS IS PAYING ATTENTION

Jaquate’s case is not simply about his individual circumstances.

At the center of his Supreme Court petition is a constitutional question involving government access to real-time location information generated through cell phones.

The ACLU filing specifically distinguishes Jaquate’s case from the geofence warrant at issue in Chatrie, explaining that his case involves a challenge to the authorization of real-time cell-phone tracking without geographic limitations.

The filing also acknowledges the argument Jaquate has presented in his own petition: that the Fourth Circuit incorrectly characterized the surveillance at issue as a pen register, while the Supreme Court’s subsequent decision in Chatrie recognized constitutional protection for cell-phone-derived location information and directed courts to consider the scope of surveillance when evaluating particularity.

Think about what that means.

A man pursuing his constitutional claim from a federal prison has now had the central issue he raised identified in a filing connected to an important Supreme Court surveillance case.

His argument did not disappear.

It reached people who understand the constitutional stakes.

RECOGNITION CAN CREATE MOMENTUM

There is a difference between believing you have an important constitutional question and seeing that question recognized in the legal record.

Jaquate has spent years trying to make that distinction clear.

His argument concerns technology capable of revealing where a person is in real time. The question is not merely what a surveillance device is called. The question is what the government is actually capable of learning through the technology—and what the Constitution requires before the government can obtain that information.

That is precisely why recognition from experienced constitutional-privacy advocates is meaningful.

The September 18 filing does not decide Jaquate’s case. It does not guarantee a particular result. But it does something that matters enormously to someone who has been fighting largely on his own:

It puts his constitutional argument in the conversation.

And sometimes, that is where momentum begins.

FROM “JUST A PRISONER” TO A CONSTITUTIONAL QUESTION

One of the most powerful parts of Jaquate’s journey is that his circumstances did not prevent him from asking a question that extends beyond himself.

Technology has changed dramatically.

The information available through a person’s cell phone can reveal movements, locations, patterns, and associates. As surveillance technology develops, constitutional law has to confront questions that earlier generations of courts could not have imagined.

Jaquate’s case raises one of those questions.

The ACLU-related filing recognizes that his case involves a challenge to real-time cell-phone tracking without geographic limitation and connects that issue to the Supreme Court’s developing treatment of cell-phone-derived location information.

That is bigger than one person.

It is about how constitutional protections apply when technology gives the government the ability to follow people electronically.

THE POWER OF BEING HEARD

Jaquate has continued moving forward even when the odds of being heard seemed uncertain.

He filed his Supreme Court peititon pro se.

He continued developing his constitutional argument.

He continued identifying the significance of the Supreme Court’s evolving Fourth Amendment jurisprudence.

And now, an ACLU Deputy Director has formally identified the similarity between his case and Chatrie in a court filing.

This is not the end of the journey.

But it is movement.

And after everything it took to get here, movement matters!

THIS IS THE MOMENTUM HE NEEDED

Momentum does not always arrive as a courtroom victory.

Sometimes it arrives as recognition.

Sometimes it arrives when someone with experience in constitutional litigation looks at an issue you have been fighting to explain and says, in effect:

This issue belongs in the conversation.

For Jaquate, that moment has arrived.

The road ahead is still uncertain. The Supreme Court has not yet decided his petition, and the September 18 filing does not determine what the Court will do. But the constitutional question he has been raising is now being recognized alongside significant Fourth Amendment litigation involving modern location surveillance.

That is worth ackowledging.

Because when you have spent years fighting to be heard, being recognized is powerful.

And Jaquate is still fighting.

Still writing.

Still challenging.

Still moving forward.

This may not be the finish line.

It may be the momentum that finally gets him there.

Recognized as similar case in 22-4489 United States v. Chatrie