Drivers in San Diego and four Wisconsin cities became the focus of new legal challenges to police license plate reader cameras, including Flock Safety systems, in fall 2026, and a federal judge in Oklahoma ruled on October 1 that a warrantless 30-day Flock history search violated the Fourth Amendment. None of these cases is a class action, and there is nothing for drivers to claim.
Allegations and Rulings · Nothing to Claim
This article describes a lawsuit, a court petition and a criminal-case ruling. The claims in the San Diego and Wisconsin filings are unproven allegations that the cities have not been found liable on, and none of the cases seeks money for drivers. This page is informational and is not legal advice.
What Is This About?
Automated license plate readers are cameras, often mounted on poles or street lights, that photograph passing cars and log each plate with a time and location. Police can then search those stored records to see where a car has been. Flock Safety is the best-known supplier, and many cities run its cameras alongside other systems.In the space of three weeks this fall, civil liberties groups sued San Diego to shut down its plate readers, asked the Wisconsin Supreme Court to require warrants before police search stored plate data, and won a ruling from a federal judge in Oklahoma that a warrantless search of a driver’s monthlong location history was unconstitutional. The three cases press the same question: whether searching weeks of plate-reader records is a search that needs a warrant.
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San Diego Sued to End Its Plate Readers
On September 29, 2026, the ACLU Foundation of San Diego & Imperial Counties sued the City of San Diego and the San Diego Police Department in San Diego Superior Court on behalf of the Partnership for the Advancement of New Americans, a local immigrant-rights group. The case is No. 26CU051879C.The suit alleges the city’s network of Flock and other plate-reader cameras, which local reporting puts at about 500, violates the privacy right in the California Constitution. According to the ACLU, the police department keeps plate-reader data for 30 days and ran nearly a quarter million searches of past plate reads last year. The complaint also points to cameras placed near a Muslim civil rights organization and a reproductive health clinic, KPBS reported. It asks the court to stop the city from using the technology, remove the cameras and delete the data collected. The mayor’s office and the police department declined to comment, citing the litigation. The San Diego City Council had voted 5–3 in December to keep using the readers.
Wisconsin Churches Ask for a Warrant Rule
On October 14, 2026, the ACLU of Wisconsin filed a petition asking the Wisconsin Supreme Court to take a case directly, on behalf of the Wisconsin Council of Churches and a Green Bay pastor. It names Milwaukee, Green Bay, Racine and Kenosha. The petition argues that searching stored plate-reader data is a search under the Wisconsin Constitution’s ban on unreasonable searches and seizures, so police should need a warrant except in emergencies. It does not seek to ban the cameras. The court must first decide whether to accept the case.A separate suit filed in September by the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty challenges Flock searches by Waukesha County and several of its municipalities under the U.S. Constitution; it has since been moved to federal court.
An Oklahoma Judge Rules Against a Warrantless Flock Search
The one ruling came in a criminal case, United States v. Kyle, No. 4:26-cr-00189, in federal court in Oklahoma. A Tulsa County sheriff’s deputy ran a rental car’s California plate through Flock and a second plate-reader system and pulled about 30 days of its movements across several states before stopping the car. On October 1, 2026, U.S. District Judge Sara E. Hill held that the warrantless search of that monthlong location history was a search under the Fourth Amendment, citing Carpenter v. United States, and suppressed the evidence. “This is a type of indiscriminate mass surveillance,” she wrote, according to TechCrunch. She also found the deputy unlawfully extended the traffic stop.The ruling is limited. It binds only that case, it does not say every use of a plate reader needs a warrant, and other courts have reached different results, including a federal judge in Virginia who upheld Norfolk’s Flock network in January.
How These Cases Differ From the Flock Class Actions
None of these cases is a consumer class action. They seek court orders limiting how governments use plate readers, or, in Oklahoma, the exclusion of evidence in one prosecution. Drivers who want to follow the proposed class actions over plate-reader data can find them on separate pages: the Flock data-sharing class action, the Flock Colorado camera lawsuit, the Lowe’s parking-lot plate reader suit and the Motive AI dashcam plate-reader suit. No class has been certified in any of them.Questions
Can drivers get money from the San Diego or Wisconsin license plate reader cases?
These cases do not seek money for drivers. The San Diego suit, brought by the ACLU of San Diego & Imperial Counties for the Partnership for the Advancement of New Americans, asks a court to end the city’s plate-reader program and delete the data. The Wisconsin petition asks the state Supreme Court to require warrants for searches of stored plate data. Neither is a class action, and there is no claim process.
What did the federal judge in Oklahoma rule about Flock?
In United States v. Kyle, a drug case in federal court in Oklahoma, U.S. District Judge Sara E. Hill ruled on October 1, 2026 that a sheriff’s deputy’s warrantless search of about 30 days of a rental car’s location history, pulled from Flock and a second plate-reader system, was a search under the Fourth Amendment, and she suppressed the evidence. The ruling applies to that criminal case and is not binding on other courts.
Is the Wisconsin Supreme Court trying to ban Flock cameras?
No ban is being sought. The October 14, 2026 petition from the Wisconsin Council of Churches and a Green Bay pastor, filed by the ACLU of Wisconsin, asks the court to rule that police in Milwaukee, Green Bay, Racine and Kenosha need a warrant, except in emergencies, before searching stored plate-reader data. The court has not yet decided whether to take the case.
Are there class actions over Flock license plate data?
Separate proposed class actions have been filed over Flock and other plate-reader systems, including suits over Flock’s data sharing and its cameras in Colorado. Those are different cases from the government challenges described here, no class has been certified in them, and none has a settlement.
Sources
• ACLU of San Diego & Imperial Counties, press release on the San Diego plate-reader suit (September 30, 2026)• KPBS, “Local ACLU Foundation sues city of San Diego, police department over use of Flock cameras” (September 30, 2026)
• NBC 7 San Diego, “ACLU sues city of San Diego and SDPD over automated license plate readers”
• Wisconsin Law Journal, “ACLU challenges police use of license plate cameras” (October 19, 2026)
• NBC 26, “Green Bay among 4 Wisconsin cities sued over use of license plate reader data”
• TechCrunch, “Federal judge calls Flock ‘indiscriminate mass surveillance’” (October 3, 2026)
• CBS12, “Federal judge rules warrantless license-plate reader search violated Fourth Amendment” (October 3, 2026)
