The Flock Safety ALPR lawsuit in Virginia, Schmidt v. City of Norfolk, ended its first round on January 27, 2026, when a federal judge ruled that Norfolk’s network of 176 automated license plate reader cameras does not violate the Fourth Amendment as it currently operates. The plaintiffs have said they will appeal to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, and the judge himself signaled that the answer could change as the technology grows.
Who Sued and What They Wanted
Lee Schmidt, a 42-year-old retired Navy veteran, and Crystal Arrington, a 44-year-old certified nursing assistant who runs a home healthcare business in Portsmouth, filed suit in October 2024 with representation from the Institute for Justice. They argued that Norfolk’s citywide camera network amounted to warrantless, round-the-clock tracking of ordinary drivers.
Schmidt told NBC News that seeing the extent of his own tracking was “shocking” and that “the creepiness level just went straight up.”1NBC News. Virginia Police Used Flock Cameras to Track Driver Arrington said she felt “legally and ethically required to protect her clients’ privacy” while driving elderly patients to medical appointments.2Institute for Justice. Schmidt v. City of Norfolk Complaint Both said that if any private party compiled a similar record of their movements, they would call it stalking.
The lawsuit asked the court for a permanent injunction to disable the cameras and an order to delete all data the city had collected on the two plaintiffs.
What Norfolk’s Camera Network Does
Norfolk paid Flock Safety $2.2 million for 176 cameras arranged in 75 clusters at intersections and transit points throughout the city, with the contract running through 2027.1NBC News. Virginia Police Used Flock Cameras to Track Driver The cameras record license plates along with “Vehicle Fingerprints” capturing the make, type, color, and distinguishing features of nearly every vehicle that passes.3Institute for Justice. Schmidt v. City of Norfolk, Opinion and Order
Data is retained for 21 days under a 2025 Virginia statute, down from Norfolk’s earlier 30-day policy.4WHRO. A Federal Judge Ruled Norfolk’s Flock Surveillance Cameras Don’t Invade People’s Privacy Yet Authorized officers can query the database by plate number or vehicle characteristics, and every search is recorded in an audit trail.
Over a four-and-a-half-month stretch in early 2025, the cameras photographed Schmidt’s vehicle roughly 475 times and Arrington’s roughly 325 times, according to the court’s factual findings.3Institute for Justice. Schmidt v. City of Norfolk, Opinion and Order Earlier plaintiff filings covering a slightly different window gave higher counts of 526 for Schmidt and 849 for Arrington, averaging four and six captures per day.1NBC News. Virginia Police Used Flock Cameras to Track Driver Whichever figure is used, one point was undisputed: Norfolk police had never actually queried either plaintiff’s plate outside of the litigation itself.
The January 2026 Ruling
Chief Judge Mark S. Davis granted summary judgment to Norfolk in a 51-page opinion, holding that the current system does not amount to a Fourth Amendment search.5Courthouse News Service. Judge Holds Norfolk’s License Plate Reader Use Constitutional
Judge Davis distinguished Norfolk’s cameras from the continuous cell-phone location tracking the Supreme Court restricted in Carpenter v. United States. The Flock cameras, he reasoned, capture discrete snapshots at fixed locations rather than the whole of a person’s movements. License plates are identifiers that state law requires drivers to display, and being photographed on a public road does not implicate a reasonable expectation of privacy. The plaintiffs had not shown that the current network could reconstruct the pattern of a life.3Institute for Justice. Schmidt v. City of Norfolk, Opinion and Order
The tone was cautious. Davis wrote that Fourth Amendment analysis must remain “nimble” against rapid advances in artificial intelligence, and that a “tipping point” could come when the system “crosses the line to an impermissible warrantless search.” The answer for Norfolk, he said, was “not today.”6The Virginian-Pilot. Recent Court Ruling Affirms Flock Camera Legality for Now He also suggested that privacy guardrails on this kind of technology are better set by legislatures than courts.
The ruling split standing in a way worth noting. The court found Schmidt and Arrington had standing to challenge the routine capture and storage of their vehicle data, since the cameras had in fact photographed them. But it denied standing to challenge warrantless database queries, because police had never actually run a search on either plaintiff’s plate.3Institute for Justice. Schmidt v. City of Norfolk, Opinion and Order
The Federal Government’s Position
The U.S. Department of Justice entered the case 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,” that ALPR technology is “minimally invasive” relative to its public safety uses, and that the warrantless system is “perfectly constitutional.”7Institute for Justice. Federal Government Calls on Court to Reject Lawsuit Challenging Constitutionality of License Plate Readers8The Virginian-Pilot. Flock Cameras Norfolk Lawsuit
Virginia’s State Courts Reached a Similar Place
The federal case ran alongside a state court fight that briefly went the other way. In May 2024, Norfolk Circuit Court Judge Jamilah D. LeCruise ruled in Commonwealth v. Bell that the Flock system’s citywide reach 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 officers had used Flock data without a warrant to track the defendant.9Electronic Frontier Foundation. Commonwealth v. Bell, 113 Va. Cir. 316
The Virginia Court of Appeals reversed that reasoning on October 14, 2025, in Commonwealth v. Church. The appeals court held that drivers have no reasonable expectation of privacy in their license plates or in vehicle locations on public roads, and that the Flock system provides only “short-term monitoring” rather than the comprehensive tracking barred by Carpenter. The court expressly rejected Bell‘s focus on “hypothetical, potential misuse.”10Virginia Courts. Commonwealth v. Church, No. 0737-25-1
Virginia’s New ALPR Law
Some of the guardrails Judge Davis pointed to already exist in statute. Virginia’s House Bill 2724, sponsored by Delegate Charniele Herring and signed by Governor Glenn Youngkin, took effect July 1, 2025. It limits police use of ALPR data to specific purposes: criminal investigations supported by reasonable suspicion, missing or endangered person cases, human trafficking investigations, and alerts for stolen vehicles or outstanding warrants.11Virginia Legislative Information System. HB2724 Bill Details
The law caps data retention at 21 days and requires agencies to file annual reports covering the number of cameras deployed, queries conducted, and vehicle stops initiated based on ALPR notifications, including demographic information for drivers stopped. 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.12Virginia Code Commission. Virginia Code § 2.2-5517
The Appeal and What’s at Stake
The Institute for Justice has said the plaintiffs will take the case to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals.5Courthouse News Service. Judge Holds Norfolk’s License Plate Reader Use Constitutional The appeal will press the argument that 176 cameras logging hundreds of captures per driver over a matter of months is already enough to reconstruct daily patterns of life, and therefore already the kind of aggregated surveillance Carpenter restricted. Norfolk and the federal government will maintain that fixed-location snapshots on public roads are not the same as continuous location tracking.
Where the Fourth Circuit draws that line will govern ALPR programs not just in Virginia but across Maryland, West Virginia, and the Carolinas. Judge Davis’s ruling leaves the door open for a different answer if the density of cameras, the length of data retention, or the analytical power applied to the data grows further. For now, Norfolk’s cameras stay on.