Institute for Justice Takes San Jose ALPR Case Toward the Supreme

Security camera mounted on a pole against a cloudy sky — Photo via Unsplash

TL;DR: On April 15, 2026, three San Jose residents (Tony Tan, Scott West, and Colin Wolfson) filed a federal class action challenging the city's 474 automated license plate reader cameras as warrantless mass surveillance under the Fourth Amendment.^[1][3] Their lawyers at the Institute for Justice are asking the court to order San Jose to delete plate data within 24 hours unless police first get a warrant.^[3] The suit was filed in the Northern District of California with an explicit aim: drive ALPR law up to the Supreme Court for a ruling that binds every city in the country.^[3] It's the second federal ALPR class action IJ has filed (Norfolk, Virginia got the first in 2024)^[3] and it's the one most likely to decide whether the cameras' growing data archive is constitutional.

What Was Filed Yesterday

The complaint landed April 15 at the Robert F. Peckham Federal Building in downtown San Jose.^[3] Three named plaintiffs, one defendant (the City of San Jose), and one very specific ask: declare San Jose's ALPR program unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment and require police to delete captured plate data within 24 hours unless they first obtain a warrant.^[3]

Tony Tan is a downtown resident and privacy engineer. He also volunteers as a legal observer, one of the people who show up when reports come in of federal immigration enforcement activity and watch what officers do. His concern in the complaint is direct: ICE could pull San Jose's ALPR data to identify the car he drives to observations and retaliate.

Scott West and Colin Wolfson round out the three plaintiffs. They're proposed class representatives for everyone who drives in San Jose, which, with 474 cameras, is functionally every driver.^[3]

"(Plaintiffs) haven't done anything wrong, and their movements are being compiled in this massive government database where officers can search them without a warrant or probable cause," Michael Soyfer, the IJ attorney leading the case, told San José Spotlight.^[1]

Why This Is Aimed at the Supreme Court

The Institute for Justice isn't a civil rights shop that files Fourth Amendment cases because it's Tuesday. IJ is a strategic litigation firm that picks cases to build national precedent. Soyfer has been clear about what this one is for.

"Our ultimate goal is to try to drive these cases up to federal courts of appeals and ultimately to the Supreme Court," he told San José Spotlight, "to try to get a ruling that will be binding across many states."^[3]

The playbook: win in the Northern District, win at the Ninth Circuit, create a circuit split with other ALPR cases, force the Supreme Court to resolve it. If SCOTUS rules ALPR mass surveillance violates the Fourth Amendment, every city running a Flock network has to rebuild its program overnight. Retention shrinks. Search rules tighten. The business model that's put cameras in 5,000+ cities cracks.

This is the second federal ALPR class action IJ has filed. The first, against Norfolk, Virginia's 170-camera system, was filed in 2024.^[3] That case is still working its way up. San Jose is bigger, louder, and in a more plaintiff-friendly circuit.

The Numbers San Jose Is Defending

San Jose runs one of the largest city ALPR deployments in the United States. Here's what IJ is putting in front of a federal judge:

474 cameras scanning plates across the city, made by Flock Safety.^[3]
30-day retention of every capture. That's already down from a full year. San Jose cut retention in February 2026 after the EFF/ACLU state lawsuit forced a response. IJ says 30 days is still too long.^[3]
~15,000 database searches per day on average in the second half of 2025, according to the complaint: queries run against the historical travel records of people who've never been accused of a crime.
Thousands of government users with access. San Jose's plate data is searchable across California through Flock's network.

Flock's PR manager Paris Lewbel responded with the line the company always uses: "Using Flock devices is constitutional" and "more than 30 courts have already definitively answered" that question. A city spokesperson said San Jose has strict policies against misuse and the cameras are essential for solving kidnappings and homicides.^[3]

IJ's complaint doesn't dispute that ALPRs sometimes help solve crimes. It disputes whether police can build a permanent travel archive of everyone in the city on the chance one of them becomes a suspect later.

The Fourth Amendment Argument

The Supreme Court did the groundwork here in Carpenter v. United States (2018), when it ruled that police need a warrant to pull seven days of cell phone location data. The logic: sustained location tracking reveals "familial, political, professional, religious, and sexual associations" that the Fourth Amendment protects, even when the individual data points are collected in public.

IJ's argument is that ALPR networks are Carpenter for cars. When San Jose logs where your vehicle was at 7:14 a.m. on a Tuesday, and again at 2:33 p.m. on Saturday, and again at 11:51 p.m. on a Thursday across weeks and months, that's not a snapshot. It's a pattern-of-life file. The complaint quotes the standard that's survived every Carpenter follow-up: the government can't mine a person's public movements to reveal intimate facts about their habits, religious observance, health, and friendships without a warrant.

The city will argue the opposite: plates are public, cars are visible on public streets, and drivers have no reasonable expectation of privacy in what anyone with eyes could see. That's the doctrine Flock has been leaning on in lower courts for years. It's also the doctrine Carpenter carved a hole in. Federal judges are now being asked to decide how big that hole is.

Two Lawsuits, One City

San Jose is now defending two parallel ALPR suits on two different legal theories.

The first, filed November 18, 2025 by the EFF and ACLU of Northern California in Santa Clara County Superior Court, relies on the California Constitution's privacy protections, which are stronger than the federal baseline. That case forced San Jose to slash retention from a year to 30 days and disable federal sharing in February 2026. It's still live.

The second, filed yesterday by IJ in the Northern District of California, relies on the federal Fourth Amendment, which applies everywhere in the country. That's the difference in scope. If EFF/ACLU win, the ruling reshapes California. If IJ wins, the ruling reshapes everything.

The two cases don't conflict. They stack. A favorable state ruling can survive and coexist with a federal ruling. A favorable federal ruling moots the state one, and every other state's version of the same fight.

What This Means For Every Other City

Every city council that approved a Flock contract in the last three years is now watching San Jose. More than 5,000 communities run ALPRs. Most retain data somewhere between 30 days and a year. Most allow warrantless searches as a matter of routine policy.

If IJ's 24-hour-or-warrant rule becomes federal law, almost none of those programs survive in their current form. Flock's business model (selling subscriptions to municipalities on the premise that the data is freely searchable) has to change. The Colorado SB26-070 warrant bill and similar legislation in a dozen states would become floors instead of ceilings.

This is why IJ picked San Jose instead of suing Flock directly. You don't need to take down the company. You need one good federal ruling that says retaining plate data for 30 days and letting officers query it without a warrant violates the Constitution. After that, Flock has to sell a different product.

What Happens Next

San Jose has 21 days to respond. Expect a motion to dismiss: that's what Norfolk tried, and that's what failed. If the case survives the motion (it should, given the Norfolk precedent), discovery starts. That's where the interesting numbers come out: how many ICE queries, how many officers searched their ex-partners, how many times the database was used for reasons that have nothing to do with solving violent crime.

The Ninth Circuit is the appellate venue if either side appeals. That court has historically been more privacy-protective than other circuits, which is part of why IJ filed here. The case probably takes 2-3 years to get a Ninth Circuit ruling, then another year or two before any Supreme Court cert petition is in front of the justices.

In the meantime, the city of San Jose will keep running 474 cameras, keep storing 30 days of data, and keep letting police search the database about 15,000 times a day. The lawsuit doesn't ask for an injunction to shut cameras down while the case is pending. It asks for a final ruling that does.

For drivers in San Jose today: nothing changes yet. For drivers in America next year: this is the case to watch.

Sources

Published: April 16, 2026