ALPR in the Courts: The Cases That Will Decide Whether This Is Constitutional

Our law page lays out what the North Carolina statute says: agencies may search captured plate data without a warrant. But a statute can’t override the Constitution, and the harder question — whether warrantless, networked plate tracking is an unreasonable search under the Fourth Amendment — is being fought in court right now. Here are the cases that matter, current as of mid-2026. Case law moves fast; treat this as a snapshot, not the last word.

The flagship: Schmidt v. City of Norfolk

The case to watch began in Norfolk, Virginia. Two residents, Lee Schmidt and Crystal Arrington, represented by the libertarian public-interest firm the Institute for Justice, sued the city over its network of about 176 Flock cameras. During a four-month stretch in 2025, the city’s system photographed the plaintiffs’ vehicles 475 and 325 times. IJ’s argument is the one the U.S. Supreme Court opened the door to in Carpenter: stitch together enough of a person’s public movements and you reveal the “whole of” their life — where they worship, seek care, and associate — so the tracking is a search that requires a warrant. IJ calls a city-wide reader network “an ankle monitor on a city’s citizens.”

On January 27, 2026, the federal district court (E.D. Va., No. 2:24-cv-00621) ruled for the city, holding the system is not a Fourth Amendment search. The judge wrote that the plaintiffs were “unable to demonstrate that [the] ALPR system is capable of tracking the whole of a person’s movements,” distinguishing the discrete snapshots at ~75 fixed camera clusters from the continuous cell-phone tracking in Carpenter. (Courthouse News.)

The plaintiffs appealed the same day. The case is now before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit (No. 26-1227), where the ACLU, EFF, EPIC, and the Cato Institute have all filed friend-of-the-court briefs backing the drivers. (ACLU case page.)

The second federal front: Tan v. San Jose

The Institute for Justice opened a second federal case in April 2026 — not in the Midwest, but in San Jose, California (Tan v. San Jose, N.D. Cal.), a class action for city drivers. San Jose runs 474 Flock cameras, and its database was searched roughly 2.5 million times in the second half of 2025 — about 15,000 queries a day, no warrant required. Same Carpenter theory, different circuit. (Institute for Justice.) Two federal appeals courts wrestling with the same question raises the odds it eventually reaches the Supreme Court.

The state-law front: data-sharing and state constitutions

Not every case rides on the Fourth Amendment. Several turn on state law, and they’re hitting Flock hard:

• SIREN v. City of San Jose (California state court, Nov. 2025) — EFF and the ACLU of Northern California argue San Jose’s warrantless ALPR searches violate the California Constitution’s privacy and search protections. (EFF.)
• California data-sharing class actions (San Francisco, Feb. 2026; Oakland, Nov. 2025) — these sue over Flock letting out-of-state and federal agencies (ICE, CBP, FBI, ATF) query California cameras, allegedly violating California’s ALPR privacy statute. An SFPD audit found the data queried on federal/out-of-state agencies’ behalf about 1.6 million times in seven months. (Courthouse News.)

North Carolina has its own version of that data-sharing limit — the statute says captured plate data may go only to law enforcement, for a legitimate purpose, on a written request. Whether the nationwide network honors that here is exactly the question our records fights are pressing.

The precedent underneath it all

Every one of these cases is built on the same foundation:

• Carpenter v. United States (2018) — the Supreme Court held that accessing a person’s historical cell-phone location data is a search, because it reveals “the whole of [their] physical movements.” This is the anchor.
• Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle v. Baltimore Police (4th Cir. 2021, en banc) — the Fourth Circuit itself struck down Baltimore’s aerial “spy plane” program as a Fourth Amendment search under Carpenter. That the Norfolk appeal sits in the same court that decided this is no small thing.
• Chatrie v. United States (2026) — on June 29, 2026, the Supreme Court held that obtaining a person’s digital location data is a Fourth Amendment search, rejecting the “a private company holds it” excuse. It’s a phone-geofence case, not an ALPR case, but it lands squarely in the middle of the Norfolk appeal and strengthens the drivers’ hand. (What Chatrie means for Flock.)

The honest state of play

We won’t overstate this: as of today, the one federal court to rule on the merits sided with the city, and the law is genuinely unsettled. But the momentum in the doctrine — Carpenter, Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle, now Chatrie — runs toward treating pervasive location tracking as a search. The Fourth Circuit could go either way, and its answer will be the law in North Carolina. A movement built on public records should also watch the courtroom — because the same question we ask the commissioners is being asked, right now, of a panel of federal judges.

Sources

• Schmidt v. Norfolk: Courthouse News (Jan. 2026 ruling) · ACLU case page · Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse (docket).
• Tan v. San Jose: Institute for Justice.
• State cases: EFF — SIREN v. San Jose · Courthouse News — Flock data-sharing suit.
• Precedent: Carpenter v. United States, 585 U.S. 296 (2018) · Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle v. Baltimore Police Dep’t, 2 F.4th 330 (4th Cir. 2021) · Chatrie v. United States (2026).

General information about ongoing litigation, not legal advice, and not a prediction of any outcome. Case details are drawn from court records and the reporting linked above and are current as of late June 2026; litigation status changes — check the dockets for the latest. Consult a licensed attorney about any specific matter. Last updated June 30, 2026.