The Norfolk Flock camera lawsuit, Schmidt v. City of Norfolk, is a federal Fourth Amendment challenge to the city’s network of automatic license plate reader cameras. On January 27, 2026, Chief Judge Mark S. Davis of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia granted summary judgment to the city, holding that the system as deployed does not constitute a warrantless search. The plaintiffs have appealed to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, where the case is docketed as No. 26-1227 and remains pending.1Cato Institute. Amicus Brief in Schmidt v. City of Norfolk
Who Sued and What They Claimed
The Institute for Justice filed the case on October 21, 2024, on behalf of Lee Schmidt, a retired military veteran, and Crystal Arrington, a health care worker. The defendants are the City of Norfolk and Police Chief Mark Talbot. The complaint argues that Norfolk’s 176 Flock cameras, arranged in 75 clusters across the city, function as a warrantless search of every driver who passes them.2Institute for Justice. Norfolk, Virginia Camera Surveillance3NBC News. Virginia Police Used Flock Cameras to Track Driver
The plaintiffs backed the claim with numbers drawn from their own records. Between mid-February and early July 2025, Schmidt’s vehicle was logged 526 times and Arrington’s 849 times, roughly four and six captures per day. The filing also cited one person in the greater Norfolk area whose vehicle was logged 14 times over a single 6.5-hour stretch.3NBC News. Virginia Police Used Flock Cameras to Track Driver “The creepiness level just went straight up,” Schmidt said.4iHeart. Driver Sues Police Claiming They Used Cameras to Track Him Over 500 Times
Each camera captures a photograph of nearly every passing vehicle along with identifying details like make, model, color, bumper stickers, and roof racks. Images are uploaded to an encrypted server and stored for 21 days, during which Virginia law enforcement officers can search the database. Norfolk officers are required to log into and use the Flock system for the entirety of every shift, and the operating standard governing data use, “law enforcement purposes,” is undefined.5Courthouse News Service. Judge Holds Norfolk’s License Plate Reader Use Constitutional2Institute for Justice. Norfolk, Virginia Camera Surveillance
The remedy sought is aggressive: disable the camera system and delete all stored data. The legal theory leans on the Supreme Court’s 2018 decision in Carpenter v. United States, which required a warrant for historical cell-site location data, and on the Fourth Circuit’s 2021 ruling in Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle v. Baltimore Police Department, which struck down Baltimore’s aerial surveillance program on similar grounds.5Courthouse News Service. Judge Holds Norfolk’s License Plate Reader Use Constitutional
What the District Court Decided
Judge Davis heard oral arguments on January 14, 2026, and issued a 51-page opinion 13 days later. The ruling split standing from the merits and rejected the challenge on both fronts, though not entirely.
Standing
Schmidt and Arrington had standing to challenge the collection and storage of their vehicle images because they had been photographed hundreds of times. They lacked standing, however, to challenge the city’s use of the ALPR database itself, because neither plaintiff’s vehicle had ever been the subject of a police query.5Courthouse News Service. Judge Holds Norfolk’s License Plate Reader Use Constitutional
The Fourth Amendment Holding
On the merits, Judge Davis held that Norfolk’s ALPR system does not constitute a “search” because it does not capture enough data to reconstruct “the whole of a person’s movements.” The plaintiffs’ captured images were taken miles apart, at intervals of 40 to 50 minutes, leaving what he called “sizable gaps” in their travel patterns.6WHRO. A Federal Judge Ruled Norfolk’s Flock Surveillance Cameras Don’t Invade People’s Privacy Yet
The court distinguished the Flock system from the surveillance in Carpenter and Leaders, calling it “meaningfully different from systems that enable persistent, comprehensive tracking.” A network of 75 camera clusters, with a 21-day rolling storage window, did not provide the “intimate window” into private life those cases described. If police still needed other investigative techniques to fill in gaps and build a path of travel, the ALPR system by itself was not revealing the “privacies of life.”7Virginia Lawyers Weekly. Norfolk License Plate Reader Fourth Amendment Dismissal
The opinion also leaned on the 1983 Supreme Court decision Knotts v. United States, which held there is no reasonable expectation of privacy when traveling on a public road.8Ars Technica. Angry Norfolk Residents Lose Lawsuit to Stop Flock License Plate Scanners
The “Not Today” Caveat
Judge Davis closed with a warning that limits how far the ruling reaches. He acknowledged that “ALPR surveillance could become too intrusive and run afoul of” constitutional standards as the technology and network density expand, and that “the constitutional balancing could conceivably tip the other way.” For Norfolk’s system as it existed in early 2026, though, his answer was “not today.”6WHRO. A Federal Judge Ruled Norfolk’s Flock Surveillance Cameras Don’t Invade People’s Privacy Yet
The caveat has practical bite because Police Chief Talbot told the City Council in 2024 that the department planned to eventually acquire more than 230 Flock cameras, up from the current 176.6WHRO. A Federal Judge Ruled Norfolk’s Flock Surveillance Cameras Don’t Invade People’s Privacy Yet
The Appeal to the Fourth Circuit
The Institute for Justice filed its opening appellate brief on April 13, 2026. The case is docketed at the Fourth Circuit as No. 26-1227. The Cato Institute filed an amicus brief on April 20, 2026, supporting the plaintiffs. Cato argues that Norfolk’s ALPR system functions as a “digital general warrant” permitting suspicionless searches forbidden by the Fourth Amendment, and that the district court erred by focusing on the quantity of data collected rather than on the government’s means of acquiring it.1Cato Institute. Amicus Brief in Schmidt v. City of Norfolk
The venue matters. The Fourth Circuit is the same court that struck down Baltimore’s aerial surveillance program in Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle, one of the two precedents the plaintiffs relied on below. Whether the appellate panel views Norfolk’s ground-level camera network as closer to Baltimore’s aerial dragnet or closer to the limited public-road observation Judge Davis described will drive the outcome. As of mid-2026, no oral argument date has been announced.
What the Federal Government Argued
In an unusual filing, the U.S. Department of Justice weighed in on the city’s side while the case was still before the district court. On September 27, 2025, U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan filed a statement of interest arguing that Norfolk’s ALPR system does not constitute a Fourth Amendment search and describing the technology as “minimally invasive — both generally and relative to the public safety benefits that the technology offers.” The Institute for Justice characterized the federal filing as relying on “decades-old cases” and said it raised “alarm bells” about federal interest in expanding mass surveillance.9The Virginian-Pilot. Flock Cameras Norfolk Lawsuit10Institute for Justice. Federal Government Calls on Court to Reject Lawsuit Challenging Constitutionality of License Plate Readers
Parallel State Court Ruling
The Schmidt lawsuit is a civil constitutional challenge and does not decide criminal admissibility questions, but a separate Virginia case reached a related result. In April 2025, Norfolk Circuit Court Judge Jamilah D. LeCruise suppressed Flock camera evidence in Commonwealth v. Church, an attempted rape and abduction case, concluding that the citywide system was analogous to GPS tracking and required a warrant. In October 2025, a three-judge panel of the Virginia Court of Appeals reversed her, holding that “a person driving his vehicle on a public street with his license plate in plain view has no reasonable expectation of privacy that his vehicle and license plate will not be seen by other persons, including law enforcement officers.” The panel called the Flock system “short-term monitoring” rather than pervasive tracking. The decision is unpublished and not binding precedent, and the case was remanded for trial.11The Virginian-Pilot. Virginia Court of Appeals Reverses Norfolk Judge’s Ruling That Tossed Flock Camera Evidence12Virginia Court of Appeals. Commonwealth of Virginia v. Ronnie D. Church
What Virginia’s ALPR Law Now Requires
While the lawsuit was pending, Virginia’s legislature imposed new statutory guardrails that operate independently of the Fourth Amendment question. House Bill 2724, sponsored by Delegate Charniele Herring and signed by Governor Glenn Youngkin, restricts ALPR data queries to situations involving reasonable suspicion of criminal activity, stolen vehicles, or missing and endangered persons.13Virginia Legislative Information System. HB2724 The law requires data to be deleted within 30 days unless connected to an ongoing investigation, mandates that officers document whether a stop was triggered by an ALPR alert, and compels agencies to submit annual reports on system usage.14Independent Institute. Virginia ALPR Oversight Bill These are statutory limits on how ALPR systems may be used in Virginia; they do not resolve the constitutional question the Fourth Circuit will now decide.
Where Things Stand
At the district court level, Norfolk’s Flock camera system has been held constitutional as currently deployed, with an explicit judicial warning that expansion could change that answer. The plaintiffs’ appeal is fully briefed at the Fourth Circuit as of April 2026, with amicus support from Cato, and awaits an argument date. A ruling from the same court that decided Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle will likely set the framework for how federal courts treat automated license plate surveillance going forward.