WHAT THE COURTS
ARE DOING.

What is argued

That Wichita's roughly 200-camera Flock network turns a licence plate into what the complaint calls "the functional equivalent of affixing a GPS tracking device", violating Section 15 of the Kansas Bill of Rights, the state's guarantee against unreasonable searches and seizures, with Fourth Amendment arguments alongside. The complaint cites 904,603 searches of the system in a single month and an estimated misidentification rate of 15 to 20 percent.

What has happened

1. July 2026Complaint filed in Sedgwick County District Court by the Kansas Justice Institute on Grimmett's behalf.
2. July 31, 2026Reason reports the filing: warrantless declaration and an injunction halting the programme are the relief sought.

Why it matters

A state-constitutional route to the same question Schmidt v. Norfolk poses federally: whether a dense ALPR network is a search. Kansas courts can read Section 15 more broadly than the Fourth Amendment, so a loss for the city here would not depend on federal precedent.

What is argued

Not a privacy claim: that the city broke its own rules in how it bought the system. The suit contends Huntington violated procurement procedures and city code in awarding a $2.1 million Flock contract, including commercial use of city property without the required public notice and hearing. The contract covers licence plate recognition, vehicle-fingerprint technology, live video, gunshot-detection audio and automated drones.

What has happened

1. July 15, 2026City Council approved the $2.1 million Flock contract on a 6-4 vote.
2. July 16, 2026Suit filed the next day, seeking to have the contract declared null and void from the start and implementation halted.

Why it matters

The procurement attack is the interesting part: it needs no ruling on surveillance at all. If a court voids the contract on process grounds, the cameras come down without any constitutional question being reached, a template other cities' opponents can copy.

What is argued

That police acquisition of Google Location History through a geofence warrant was a Fourth Amendment search requiring constitutional protection.

What has happened

1. June 29, 2026The Supreme Court held 6 to 3 that acquiring Google Location History is a Fourth Amendment search, and that a person has a reasonable expectation of privacy in it.
2. June 29, 2026The Court expressly declined to decide whether the warrant in this case was itself constitutional, remanding to the Fourth Circuit to consider probable cause and particularity.

Why it matters

Not a Flock case, and listed here because it is the doctrine the Flock cases now run on. It is also pending before the same circuit hearing Schmidt. It cuts against the argument that bulk location data is outside the Fourth Amendment simply because any single observation is public, which is close to the reasoning the Norfolk trial court used.

What is argued

That Norfolk's city-wide Flock network records and stores residents' movements without a warrant, and that this amounts to an unreasonable search under the Fourth Amendment. Schmidt's vehicle was recorded 475 times in four months.

What has happened

1. October 2024Complaint filed in the Eastern District of Virginia with Institute for Justice backing.
2. January 27, 2026Judge Mark Davis ruled for the City, holding the network did not require a warrant. He found captures infrequent and widely spaced, averaging 45 to 50 minutes and 2.5 to 3.5 miles apart, and distinguished Carpenter v. United States on that basis.
3. April 20, 2026ACLU, ACLU of Virginia and the Electronic Frontier Foundation filed an amicus brief in the Fourth Circuit. The Cato Institute and EPIC also filed in support of the plaintiffs.

On the procedural posture: Secondary reporting describes the January ruling variously as a dismissal and as summary judgment for the city. Those are different procedural events. Until the order itself is read, this entry records only that the district court ruled for the City on 27 January 2026.

Why it matters

The most advanced constitutional challenge to a municipal Flock network. Norfolk ran 176 cameras across 75 clusters in 66 square miles on a 21-day rolling retention, which makes it a test of whether density and retention convert ordinary observation into a search.