A federal judge in Norfolk ruled in January 2026 that the city’s Flock Safety automated license plate reader network does not violate the Fourth Amendment, dismissing the Flock Safety ALPR Virginia lawsuit brought by two residents who argued the 176-camera system amounted to warrantless mass surveillance. The plaintiffs have said they will appeal to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals.
What the Court Decided
On January 27, 2026, Chief Judge Mark S. Davis issued a 51-page opinion granting summary judgment to the City of Norfolk in Schmidt v. City of Norfolk.1Courthouse News Service. Judge Holds Norfolk’s License Plate Reader Use Constitutional The question was whether photographing nearly every vehicle that passes through 75 camera clusters, and holding that data for 21 days, counts as a Fourth Amendment “search.”
Davis concluded it does not, at least not as the system currently operates. He reasoned that Norfolk’s cameras capture discrete snapshots at fixed locations rather than the continuous, comprehensive tracking the Supreme Court addressed in Carpenter v. United States. License plates, he noted, are identifiers the state requires drivers to display, and a motorist on a public road has no reasonable expectation of privacy in being photographed there. The plaintiffs, he found, had not shown that the current system can track “the whole of a person’s movements.”2Institute for Justice. Schmidt v. City of Norfolk, Opinion and Order
The tone of the ruling was cautious. Davis acknowledged that ALPR surveillance could eventually become unconstitutionally intrusive as camera density and artificial intelligence advance, and said Fourth Amendment analysis must remain “nimble.” He wrote that a “tipping point” may arrive where the system “crosses the line to an impermissible warrantless search,” but the answer for Norfolk was “not today.”3The Virginian-Pilot. Recent Court Ruling Affirms Flock Camera Legality for Now He also suggested that legislatures, not courts, are better suited to set privacy guardrails on this technology.
The court split the standing question in a way that matters for future cases. Schmidt and Arrington had standing to challenge the routine collection and storage of their data, because the cameras had in fact photographed them hundreds of times. But they lacked standing to challenge warrantless queries of the database, because Norfolk police had never actually searched for either plaintiff’s plate outside the litigation.2Institute for Justice. Schmidt v. City of Norfolk, Opinion and Order
Who Sued and Why
Lee Schmidt, a 42-year-old retired Navy veteran living in Norfolk, and Crystal Arrington, a 44-year-old certified nursing assistant who runs a home healthcare business in nearby Portsmouth, filed the lawsuit in October 2024 with representation from the Institute for Justice. Both argued that Norfolk’s camera network amounted to secret, round-the-clock tracking of ordinary people who had done nothing wrong.
Schmidt told NBC News that learning the extent of his own tracking was jarring: “It’s a crazy high number. It was shocking. The creepiness level just went straight up.”4NBC News. Virginia Police Used Flock Cameras to Track Driver Arrington said she felt “legally and ethically required to protect her clients’ privacy” when transporting elderly patients to medical appointments.5Institute for Justice. Schmidt v. City of Norfolk Complaint Both said that if a private person had compiled such a detailed record of their movements, they would consider it stalking.
During a four-and-a-half-month stretch in early 2025, the court found, the cameras photographed Schmidt’s vehicle approximately 475 times and Arrington’s roughly 325 times.2Institute for Justice. Schmidt v. City of Norfolk, Opinion and Order Earlier plaintiff filings cited higher numbers from a slightly different window: 526 captures for Schmidt and 849 for Arrington between mid-February and early July, averaging four and six captures per day.4NBC News. Virginia Police Used Flock Cameras to Track Driver The lawsuit sought a permanent injunction to disable the cameras and an order to delete all data collected on the plaintiffs.
The federal government weighed in on Norfolk’s side. On September 27, 2025, U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan filed a statement of interest arguing that “no American can reasonably expect privacy on public roads” and that ALPR technology is “minimally invasive” relative to its public safety benefits, making the warrantless system “perfectly constitutional.”6Institute for Justice. Federal Government Calls on Court to Reject Lawsuit Challenging Constitutionality of License Plate Readers
How Norfolk’s Camera System Works
Norfolk signed a $2.2 million contract with Flock Safety for 176 cameras installed across the city, running through the end of 2027.4NBC News. Virginia Police Used Flock Cameras to Track Driver The cameras are arranged in 75 clusters at busy intersections and transit points, and they record not only license plates but also “Vehicle Fingerprints,” meaning the make, type, color, and distinguishing features of nearly every vehicle that passes.2Institute for Justice. Schmidt v. City of Norfolk, Opinion and Order
Data is retained for 21 days under Virginia law before automatic deletion. Norfolk had previously kept it for 30 days.7WHRO. A Federal Judge Ruled Norfolk’s Flock Surveillance Cameras Don’t Invade People’s Privacy Yet Authorized officers can query the database using plate numbers or vehicle characteristics, and each search is logged in an audit trail. One point was undisputed in the case: Norfolk police had never actually queried either plaintiff’s plate outside the litigation itself.
The Parallel State Court Cases
The federal lawsuit was not the only Virginia court fight over Flock. In May 2024, Norfolk Circuit Court Judge Jamilah D. LeCruise ruled in Commonwealth v. Bell that the Flock system’s citywide surveillance was “akin to a GPS device” and that warrantless access to its data violated the Fourth Amendment. She suppressed evidence in a robbery case where police had used Flock data without a warrant to track the defendant’s vehicle.8Electronic Frontier Foundation. Commonwealth v. Bell, 113 Va. Cir. 316
That reasoning did not survive. On October 14, 2025, the Virginia Court of Appeals reversed in Commonwealth v. Church, holding that drivers have no reasonable expectation of privacy in their license plates or vehicle locations on public roads and that the Flock system provides only “short-term monitoring” rather than the comprehensive tracking Carpenter found unconstitutional. The appeals court explicitly rejected Bell‘s focus on “hypothetical, potential misuse” of the technology.9Virginia Courts. Commonwealth v. Church, No. 0737-25-1 The state and federal rulings now point in the same direction.
Virginia’s New ALPR Law
Part of the backdrop to the ruling is House Bill 2724, sponsored by Delegate Charniele Herring and signed by Governor Glenn Youngkin. The law took effect July 1, 2025, and restricts police use of ALPR data to specific purposes: criminal investigations involving reasonable suspicion, missing or endangered person cases, human trafficking investigations, and alerts for stolen vehicles or outstanding warrants.10Virginia Legislative Information System. HB2724 Bill Details
Agencies must file annual reports covering the number of cameras deployed, queries conducted, and vehicle stops initiated by ALPR notifications, including the demographics of drivers stopped. The 21-day retention cap is written into the statute, and officers must document whether a stop was triggered by an ALPR alert. Willful unauthorized use or sharing of ALPR data is a Class 1 misdemeanor, and evidence obtained in violation of the statute is inadmissible in court.11Virginia Code Commission. Virginia Code § 2.2-5517 Judge Davis pointed to this kind of legislative line-drawing as the better forum for setting privacy limits on the technology.
The Appeal and What’s at Stake
The Institute for Justice announced that Schmidt and Arrington will appeal to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals.1Courthouse News Service. Judge Holds Norfolk’s License Plate Reader Use Constitutional The appeal will test Davis’s “not today” framing directly. The plaintiffs argue that 176 cameras producing hundreds of captures per person over a few months is already enough to reconstruct the patterns of daily life. Norfolk and the federal government maintain that snapshots at fixed locations are categorically different from the pervasive cell-site tracking the Supreme Court restricted in Carpenter.
The Fourth Circuit’s answer will set the constitutional floor for ALPR programs across Virginia, Maryland, West Virginia, and the Carolinas. If the plaintiffs succeed, cities running Flock networks of similar scale may need warrants to query their own data, or may have to shrink the networks themselves. If Davis’s ruling holds, the practical limits on these systems will come from state statutes like HB 2724 rather than from the Fourth Amendment.