A federal district court in Oklahoma has departed from the previous consensus on the use of automated license plate reader (“ALPR”) technology by law enforcement, holding that a police officer violated the Fourth Amendment when he queried ALPR databases to obtain one month of a vehicle’s historical location records without a warrant.
In United States v. Kyle, Case No. 26-CR-00189-SEH (N.D. Okla. Oct. 1, 2026), the Northern District of Oklahoma granted a criminal defendant’s motion to suppress after finding both that the officer improperly prolonged a traffic stop and, separately, that his use of two ALPR databases constituted an unconstitutional search. The latter decision is notable because, as the court acknowledged, “nearly every court” to consider ALPR technology to date has reached the opposite conclusion, generally reasoning that drivers lack a reasonable expectation of privacy in movements exposed to public view.
The Court’s ALPR Analysis
The officer in Kyle had access to ALPR systems that aggregated license plate observations from cameras in multiple states. After seeing a vehicle bearing California plates, the officer queried the systems and obtained more than 50 records reflecting roughly a month of the vehicle’s travel history. According to the court, the only basis for running that search was the vehicle’s California plate.
In defending the validity of the search, the government relied on United States v. Knotts, in which the Supreme Court held that a driver generally has no reasonable expectation of privacy in movements visible on public roads. But the Kyle court emphasized that Knotts involved police use of a “rudimentary beeper” to follow a particular vehicle, not a database that continuously collects and permits retrospective searches of vehicles across a broader network. Knotts also expressly left open whether different constitutional principles might apply if “dragnet type” surveillance someday became possible.
The Kyle court viewed modern ALPR databases as different from the beeper at issue in Knotts—not merely as tools that make individual public observations more efficient, but as systems that continuously collect observations about large numbers of vehicles and allow officers to reconstruct historical travel. The Kyle court relied on the Supreme Court’s more recent decisions in Carpenter v. United States and Chatrie v. United States. In Carpenter, the Supreme Court held that the government’s acquisition of historical cell-site location information constituted a Fourth Amendment search, and in Chatrie, it held that police conducted a Fourth Amendment search when they obtained Google Location History data through a geofence warrant. Applying the Supreme Court’s reasoning, Kyle concluded that the officer’s ALPR query implicated similar concerns because officers could retrieve a continuously updated record containing dozens of observations across multiple states. The court characterized the system as the type of mass surveillance that implicated the same concerns as in Carpenter and Chatrie,and concluded that searching Kyle’s historical ALPR data intruded on her reasonable expectation of privacy.
Kyle Does Not Automatically Require a Warrant for all ALPR Use
The decision is significant, but its reach should not be overstated. The court here expressly acknowledged that ALPR information is less precise and less comprehensive than cell phone location data. And Carpenter itself declined to address surveillance cameras in public places or to announce a general rule for all location information. Further, Kyle was influenced by the particular capabilities described in the record, including 30 days of location history, over 50 observations, and multi-state coverage. A more limited ALPR search and location history—as many companies provide—could produce a different result.
Moreover, other courts considering ALPR systems have reached the opposite conclusion from Kyle. Recently, the Eastern District of Virginia held in Schmidt v. City of Norfolk that Norfolk’s ALPR system did not violate the Fourth Amendment because it did not “blanket” the city like the Carpenter cell towers and did not reconstruct the whole of plaintiffs’ movements. The Northern District of Illinois in Scholl v. Illinois State Police similarly rejected a challenge to the state’s ALPR network under Knotts because the information recorded was not as revealing as that described in Carpenter or similar cases. The Northern District of Ohio, Middle District of Florida, and several other state and federal courts have largely reached the same result.
Appeals are currently pending before the Fifth, (United States v. Brownlee), Fourth (Schmidt) and Seventh Circuits (Scholl) that will address Fourth Amendment challenges to police use of ALPR information and likely provide appellate guidance on Chatrie and Carpenter’s application to ALPR systems.
Practical Takeaways
For ALPR providers, Kyle highlights the nature of system features that may drive future courts’ Fourth Amendment analyses. Providers should be prepared to explain how their systems differ from the comprehensive location tracking at issue in Carpenter and Chatrie. That includes understanding and documenting information such as camera density, geographic coverage, retention periods, query results, access to ALPR data obtained across jurisdictions, and the extent to which a search can reconstruct a vehicle’s movements over time.
Providers should also continue monitoring Brownlee, Schmidt, and Scholl. Appellate decisions are likely to play an important role in determining whether courts continue to treat ALPR data as ordinary observations of vehicles in public or begin extending Carpenter and Chatrie to aggregated vehicle location databases. Indeed, at oral argument in Brownlee this week, members of the Fifth Circuit panel appeared skeptical of the government’s argument that publicly observable movements are categorically unprotected. The panel questioned whether that rule remains workable when modern camera networks can compile and analyze vehicle movements instantaneously, and whether using a network of public cameras to track a vehicle is meaningfully different from GPS tracking. On the other hand, the Seventh Circuit panel in Scholl compared ALPR camera networks to real-time patrol surveillance, asking counsel for the parties whether the two are equivalent for purposes of the Fourth Amendment. These questions suggest that the line between traditional public observation and the type of aggregated location tracking addressed in Carpenter and Chatrie will be central to the developing appellate case law.