Illinois Police Escape Privacy Suit Over License Plate Cameras

Illinois State Police and state officials convinced a federal judge to throw out claims that “warrantless” monitoring of drivers in Cook County using automated license plate readers violates the Fourth Amendment.

US District Judge Martha M. Pacold found that the state’s installation and use of ALPRs is not a “search” subject to Fourth Amendment scrutiny, according to the opinion filed Monday in the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.

Macold denied plaintiffs’ request for preliminary injunction and allowed them to file a motion for leave to amend before April 30.

Illinois residents Stephanie Scholl and Frank Bednarz filed a May 30 complaint accusing the state police agency and its director, Brendan F. Kelly, of leveraging more than 300 ALPR cameras—which capture and store images of license plates for law enforcement purposes—to unconstitutionally track millions of people. The proposed class action also named Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker and Attorney General Kwame Raoul as defendants.

The ruling follows the Dec. 12 oral arguments on the state’s September motion to dismiss the case and plaintiffs’ August motion for a preliminary injunction requiring authorities to obtain warrants to access data collected by automated license plate readers.