Seventh Circuit weighs challenge to Illinois highway license plate cameras

The panel was skeptical of the appellant claim that simply capturing photos of license plates along the Illinois expressway could be a Fourth Amendment search during arguments on Tuesday.CHICAGO (CN) — A Seventh Circuit panel heard oral arguments on Tuesday in a lawsuit brought by Illinois residents who claim photos taken by state-owned license plate cameras along public highways constitute an illegal search.“The capturing of license plate images is not a search,” Assistant Attorney General Anna Gottlieb said during oral arguments Tuesday. “It simply tracks discreet movements at fixed locations along public expressways. It is not a sweeping look into any one individual’s life.”The Illinois General Assembly enacted the Tamara Clayton Expressway Camera Act in 2020 after the fatal shooting of United States Postal Service worker Tamara Clayton on the I-57 expressway.The act established a program to increase the number of automated license plate readers along expressways and state highways. There are currently 807 cameras installed statewide, including 402 in Cook County alone, according to the state’s statistics dashboard.Once a license plate is captured, software compares it with several law enforcement databases and stores the image and metadata in the “Vehicle Manager” database, where the information can be accessed by law enforcement for up to 90 days without a warrant, according to plaintiffs.Two Cook County residents challenged the act in district court, asserting the network of cameras violates their Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable searches by tracking their movements via continuous dragnet surveillance.The district court dismissed their complaint, finding that they lacked standing to challenge the use of the database to retrieve images because they did not argue they could be the subject of such retrieval, and that the initial capture of license plate images is not a search.On Tuesday, a Seventh Circuit panel questioned whether the state’s capture of license plate images along public highways constitutes a warrantless search.Attorney Reilly Stephens represented plaintiffs Stephanie Scholl and Frank Bednarz in their claims against the Illinois State Police, Governor Jay Pritzker and Attorney General Kwame Raoul.Circuit Judge Rebecca Taibleson cut in early to press Stephens on when exactly the illegal search is taking place — when the license plate photo is taken or when the database of photos is accessed?Stephens argued that the collection of the data itself is unconstitutional and that its use for tracking is fruit of the poisonous tree.He likened the case to the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Carpenter v. United States, which held that warrantless tracking of a person’s movements via cell phone tower records constitutes a search.Circuit Judge Amy St. Eve pressed this argument using the circuit’s own ruling in U.S. v. Hammond, in which the court held that the use of cell phone data for real-time tracking is constitutional.The primary difference between the two cases is when the data is being used, though St. Eve drilled Stephens on why that matters if his challenge is to the collection of the license plate photos.The attorney did not provide a clear answer before his time concluded. Stephens could not be immediately reached for comment on this question.Last month, the dashboard reported the cameras captured 273,994,699 license plate images, which include the date, time and GPS coordinates of the capture. There were reportedly over 7 million “hits,” or times when a license plate image matched a license plate entered in a “hot list.”The hot list includes license plate numbers of stolen vehicles, wanted subjects, missing persons, AMBER alerts, suspended, revoked or expired registrations, “or any other criteria,” according to the dashboard.Chief Judge Michael Brennan questioned Gottlieb on the exponentially increasing number of cameras and whether there is a point at which the network becomes a true surveillance dragnet.St. Eve added to the line of questioning, suggesting a scenario in which an individual lives or goes to church just off the highway.To both, Gottlieb argued that an individual has no expectation of privacy in the outside of their car or on their license plate, and that the cameras do not allow for continuous tracking no matter how many cameras there are.“The automated license plate system is limited in scope to public expressways, so we don’t have the kind of intrusiveness into private life that the court has been concerned with [in past cases]. Even if there are more cameras, [they cannot] disclose where people go to church or what they are doing in their private life,” Gottlieb said.Department of Justice Senior Counsel Michael Weisbuch argued on behalf of the federal government that the issue, which he said has been raised in other states, is a policy issue rather than a legal one.Illinois no longer shares the camera data, which is captured and stored by Motorola Solutions, with federal agencies, and it is not covered by the Freedom of Information Act, according to the program transparency page.Gottlieb declined to comment on the arguments.Subscribe to our free newslettersOur weekly newsletter Closing Arguments offers the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world, while the monthly Under the Lights dishes the legal dirt from Hollywood, sports, Big Tech and the arts.Additional Reads