Norfolk residents Lee Schmidt (a retired Navy veteran, tracked 526 times in 4 months) and Crystal Arrington (tracked hundreds of times) filed suit against the City of Norfolk over its network of 176 Flock Safety ALPR cameras. Represented by the Institute for Justice, the plaintiffs argued the warrantless mass surveillance violated the Fourth Amendment. In February 2025, the court denied Norfolk's motion to dismiss — a significant early victory for privacy advocates. However, on January 27, 2026, just days before a scheduled bench trial, Judge Mark Davis ruled against the plaintiffs, finding that Norfolk's system does not yet constitute tracking "the whole of a person's movements."
California Attorney General Rob Bonta filed suit against the City of El Cajon after its police department repeatedly violated California SB 34 — a state law prohibiting the sharing of ALPR data with out-of-state or federal agencies. Despite multiple warnings, El Cajon continued sharing Flock Safety data with agencies in over 26 states, including Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, and Texas. The AG warned this puts immigrants, abortion patients, protesters, and other vulnerable Californians at serious risk. In November 2025, the AG filed an additional motion pressing the court for enforcement. El Cajon's mayor called the lawsuit "purely political."
A Norfolk Circuit Court judge ruled that accessing Flock ALPR data without a warrant violated the Fourth Amendment. The court found that the collection and storage of license plate and location information by the Flock system constitutes a "search" within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment and requires a warrant. This was a landmark ruling for privacy advocates — the first of its kind against Flock's system.
The Virginia Court of Appeals directly reversed the lower court's Bell ruling, finding that Flock ALPR cameras photographing license plates on public roads do not require a warrant. The court held that because the Flock system only photographed vehicles on public thoroughfares, no warrant was required for police to access the data. Flock Safety celebrated this ruling, stating it "eliminates the only adverse decision in the country" related to their LPR technology.
Washington's Court of Appeals ruled that a fixed-location ALPR image of a license plate on a public roadway is not a search under the Fourth Amendment or Washington's state constitution. The case arose when a defendant charged with possession of a stolen vehicle sought to suppress evidence obtained through a Flock LPR hit. The court rejected arguments comparing ALPR use to GPS tracking or cell-phone location monitoring, finding that an ALPR observation is equivalent to an officer visually noting a license plate.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) challenged municipalities' attempts to keep Flock Safety ALPR data secret from the public. The Skagit County Superior Court rejected local cities' argument that ALPR surveillance data was exempt from public records laws. Cities had claimed data belonged to Flock Safety, not the city — a contradictory argument the court rejected. This ruling ensures the public's right to access information about how these surveillance systems are being used.
Two California drivers filed a class-action lawsuit against Flock Safety directly, alleging the company violated California's ALPR Privacy Act by allowing federal and out-of-state agencies to access data from hundreds of California police databases without authorization. The complaint documents that out-of-state agencies searched the San Francisco Police Department's Flock database over 1.6 million times between August 2024 and February 2025. The Mountain View Police Department claims Flock enabled out-of-state access without the department's knowledge or permission.