Federal judge says Tulsa deputy's use of Flock license-plate reader breached the Fourth Amendment

Tulsa County Deputy Sheriff Freddie Alaniz stopped driver Melisa Kyle after noticing her out-of-state plates and accessed the Flock license-plate reader, obtaining over a month of the vehicle’s movements across several states. After a second traffic stop and a denied request to search her car, Kyle was detained for a drug-sniffing dog, which led to a marijuana arrest. Kyle challenged both the stop and the ALPR search, prompting U.S. District Judge Sara E. Hill to rule that the ALPR query was an unlawful search under the Fourth Amendment.

Hill warned that systems like Flock create a nationwide dragnet, collecting data on every vehicle passing any network-connected camera and serving it on demand. She ordered the post-search evidence suppressed as “fruit of the poisonous tree,” noting the need for courts to adapt Fourth Amendment doctrine to evolving surveillance tools. The decision arrives amid ongoing legal debates over whether automated license-plate readers constitute searches.