A federal judge dismissed a lawsuit challenging Norfolk, Virginia’s network of automatic license plate readers, or ALPRs, a type of camera described by the Electronic Frontier Foundation as having the ability to “automatically capture all license plate numbers that come into view, along with the location, date, and time.”
In the lawsuit, Schmidt v. City of Norfolk, attorneys from the Institute for Justice claimed the system of cameras was unconstitutional and made it “functionally impossible for people to drive anywhere without having their movements tracked, photographed, and stored in an AI-assisted database that enables the warrantless surveillance of their every move.”
US District Court Judge Mark S. Davis rejected these claims, however, writing the Institute for Justice and its clients were unable to demonstrate Norfolk’s ALPR system can track the whole of a person’s movements.
Previous ALPR Challenge
A separate ALPR case, Scholl vs. Illinois State Police, likewise was dismissed on similar grounds in March 2025.
In Scholl attorneys from the Liberty Justice Center attempted to challenge the license plate reader network rolled out on Illinois expressways via the 2019 Tamara Clayton Expressway Camera Act.
Misunderstanding of Precedent
When asked about the decision in the Norfolk decision, Michael Soyfer, an Institute for Justice attorney involved with the case, told Budget & Tax News, “I think the court’s opinion reflects the misunderstanding of how to apply Supreme Court and Fourth Circuit precedent about surveillance technologies to new and growing technologies like license plate readers.”
“The Supreme Court has set out kind of two guideposts for courts evaluating surveillance,” said Soyfer. “The first is preserving the degree of privacy from government that existed when the Fourth Amendment was ratified in 1791. The second is avoiding a too-permeating police surveillance.”
Two of the cases most relevant to the Institute for Justice’s claims, Soyfer says, are Carpenter v. United States and Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle v. Baltimore Police Department.
“In Carpenter vs. United States, the Supreme Court held that it violated the Fourth Amendment for police to get cell site location information without a warrant,” said Soyfer.
The Supreme Court also recognized that, while any given movement is public, the sum of one’s movements is private, Soyfer said.
In Beautiful Struggle, which successfully challenged the Baltimore PD’s aerial surveillance program, “the Fourth Circuit interpreted Carpenter not to require that police get the literal whole of your movements, but that they collect enough information over the long term to potentially be able to make inferences about habits and routines, sometimes in combination with other information,” said Soyfer.
“Unfortunately [in the Norfolk case], the court interpreted … Carpenter and Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle to create this whole-of-your-movement standard rather than announcing more general principles for evaluating surveillance technologies,” said Soyfer.
Intrusive Inferences
ALPRs are similar to the aerial surveillance program challenged in Beautiful Struggle in allowing law enforcement agencies to make inferences about an individual’s habits and routines, says Soyfer.
“License plate readers track people multiple times per day when they’re doing most of their moving, which is, in a car-dependent city like Norfolk, in their cars,” said Soyfer. “Even though the cameras aren’t following them, obviously, on every second of their route, … police could make really intrusive inferences.”
“They could spot when people entered neighborhoods where their relatives or friends lived, and they could spot when they exited those neighborhoods,” said Soyfer. “We certainly think the timing and iteration of visits to friends and loved ones is a private matter.”
Additionally, there are cameras very close to grocery stores, churches, and hospitals, says Soyfer.
“They don’t tell you for sure someone went to one of those places,” said Soyfer. “There may be multiple things around them. But that just means that police have to make an inference. They have to use their judgment. And when you follow someone over the long term, as these cameras do, you can kind of home in on where people are going within the area you’re looking at.”
The Issue for Our Time
Discussing the difficulties facing legal challenges to ALPRs and surveillance technologies more broadly, Soyfer said, “I think the courts are probably years behind in understanding how technology is shrinking our personal security and privacy when we venture out in public and is empowering police to have unprecedented, warrantless insight into our personal, private lives.”
Reilly Stephens, a Liberty Justice Center attorney involved with Scholl, says government use of surveillance technology is becoming a critical threat to individual rights.
“I really think this is the issue for our time,” said Stephens. “Whether Republicans or Democrats hold the White House or Congress or any of these other things, this technology is not going away, and with AI it’s becoming more and more powerful.
“They’re putting AI in these cameras so it can detect more than just the license plate,” said Stephens. “If you read [vendor] marketing copy, they claim they can use the roof rack on your car and what bumper stickers you have and things like that to fingerprint your car.”
Moreover, ALPRs are part of a larger panoply of surveillance tools, such as facial recognition and CCTV cameras, that are being rolled out, says Stephens.
Stephens and Soyfer say they and their organizations are appealing the decisions in their respective cases.
Daniel Nuccio, Ph.D. ([email protected]) is a spring 2026 College Fix journalism fellow, reporter, and editorial associate at The Heartland Institute.
