AMICUS BRIEF IN Schmidt v. City of norfolk

On April 20, 2026, the Policing Project filed an amicus brief in the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals case Schmidt v. City of Norfolk. The case challenges the City of Norfolk’s warrantless automated license plate reader (ALPR) surveillance program. The district court granted summary judgement to the City, finding that Norfolk’s ALPR program does not violate the Fourth Amendment because, according to the court, the City’s ALPR cameras do not capture the whole of individuals’ movements. 

The amicus brief urges the appellate court to recognize that the City of Norfolk’s use of the program constitutes a search under the Fourth Amendment — and is thus subject to constitutional scrutiny — because of the technology’s sprawling surveillance capabilities and its integration into a much broader surveillance ecosystem.

In ruling against the Plaintiffs, the district court sought to apply the Fourth Circuit’s 2021 en banc decision in Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle v. Baltimore Police Department. At issue in that case was another form of indiscriminate police surveillance: the Baltimore Police Department (“BPD”)’s Aerial Investigation Research (“AIR”) Program, in which BPD flew aerial surveillance planes over Baltimore. 

The Policing Project filed this amicus brief because it has unique expertise on the AIR Program, which the district court sought to distinguish from Norfolk’s ALPRs. In 2020, at Baltimore’s request, the Policing Project conducted a civil rights and civil liberties audit of the program. That experience gave the Policing Project a detailed, first-hand understanding of how AIR operated. Based on that expertise, the Policing Project’s brief explains to the Fourth Circuit that the district court’s analysis of how Norfolk’s ALPRs are different from BPD’s AIR Program was wrong.

Read the full brief here.