Institute for Justice Asks Federal Appeals Court to Make Clear that Using License Plate Readers to Track People is a Fourth Amendment Search

ARLINGTON, Va.—Today, the Institute for Justice (IJ) filed an amicus brief in United States v. Sturdivant, asking the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to hold that using automated license plate readers (ALPRs) to track people’s movements is a search that requires a warrant. 

Unable to find a suspect while investigating a string of robberies in December 2021, law enforcement turned to a vast network of around 3,000 Flock and other ALPRs across greater Cleveland. That led them to Lawrence Sturdivant, who was charged with multiple counts of robbery in federal court. In the trial court, Sturdivant moved to suppress evidence generated using ALPRs, but the court denied the motion. Although the court recognized that the ever-growing numbers and capabilities of ALPRs posed a grave threat to Fourth Amendment rights, it reasoned that the system simply captured too little information about Sturdivant’s movements. Sturdivant pleaded guilty and has appealed the denial of his suppression motion to the 6th Circuit. 

“ALPRs can sometimes be a valuable crime-solving tool, but that does not mean that police should be able to disregard the Fourth Amendment when using them,” said IJ Attorney Michael Soyfer. “If police want to use a vast network of surveillance cameras to track people’s movements, then the Fourth Amendment requires them to get a specific warrant based on probable cause.”  

IJ’s brief argues that the 6th Circuit “should hold the use of an ALPR dragnet to surveil drivers without suspicion is an unreasonable search.” Specifically, IJ points out that recent Supreme Court precedent makes clear that the trial court was wrong to focus on the limited amount of information this dragnet captured about Sturdivant. ALPRs capture astonishing amounts of information about the movements of ordinary people who are not suspected of any wrongdoing and feed that information into massive databases that police can search on demand. This is exactly the type of virtual panopticon the Supreme Court has repeatedly held is a search that requires a warrant because it violates expectations of privacy dating back to the founding. 

In recent months, abuse of ALPR cameras has become a hot-button issue across the country, with innocent people being stalked, mistakenly detained (sometimes at gunpoint), or wrongly incarcerated because of the cameras. IJ has documented 300 examples of ALPR abuse throughout the country. In response, nearly 300 local governments have canceled their ALPR contracts since the start of 2025. 

Through its Plate Privacy Project, IJ is fighting back against the warrantless use of ALPR cameras throughout the country. IJ has two active federal lawsuits challenging the use of these cameras in Norfolk, Virginia and San Jose, California. Additionally, IJ has worked with activists on the ground to help fight back against the proliferation of these cameras in their communities. And earlier this year, IJ testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism about the issue of ALPR abuse.