A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit that accused Illinois State Police of excessive surveillance and of violating the constitution through its use license plate readers.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois last summer, alleged ISP collects and stores information without the consent of drivers, creating a “system of dragnet surveillance.” The cameras used to read license plates can record GPS coordinates, dates and times and photos of vehicles.
“Defendants are tracking anyone who drives to work in Cook County — or to school, or a grocery store, or a doctor’s office, or a pharmacy, or a political rally, or a romantic encounter, or family gathering — every day, without any reason to suspect anyone of anything, and are holding onto those whereabouts just in case they decide in the future that some citizen might be an appropriate target of law enforcement,” the suit reads.
Federal judge Martha Pacold granted ISP’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit Monday. Plaintiffs Stephanie Scholl and Frank Bednarz, both Cook County residents, now have until the end of the month to file a motion for leave to amend. The lawsuit originally sought to bar the state from using its current license plate reader technology and ban the installation of more readers.
Attorneys for Scholl and Bednarz didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
The use of license plate readers allows police departments to respond faster to crime and send real-time alerts about cars wanted in criminal investigations. After a spike in expressway shootings, ISP was given a $12 million grant to expand the use of license plate readers in 2021.
In her judgment, Pacold cited multiple Supreme Court decisions, concluding the use of license plate readers “does not trigger Fourth Amendment scrutiny.” License plate numbers don’t meet the threshold of private information because they are clearly visible on the front and back of every vehicle registered in Illinois, Pacold wrote.
Pacold left room, however, for the legal opinion to change if the use of license plate readers evolves and advances further. But as it stands now, the use of license plate readers “is not sufficiently akin to ‘attach[ing] an ankle monitor’ to every person in Illinois,” as the original complaint alleges.
ISP welcomed the decision to dismiss the case, saying in a statement that the license plate readers are “one of the most effective tools ISP uses to solve crimes, especially expressway shootings.” The readers were part of why ISP was able to file charges in all 2023 expressway shootings, and they aren’t used for “petty offenses” such as speeding, spokesperson Melaney Arnold said in the statement. The information stored by ISP through the readers is destroyed after 90 days unless it’s related to an ongoing investigation, Arnold added.
“The use of license plate readers is a force multiplier in helping prevent and solve crime and the continued use of this technology is critical to our ongoing success,” Arnold said.
The lawsuit named Governor J.B. Pritzker and Attorney General Kwame Raoul. A spokesperson for Pritzker referred a reporter to ISP for comment. A spokesperson for Raoul also didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.