The ACLU of Wisconsin and the Electronic Frontier Foundation filed a petition for original action with the Wisconsin Supreme Court on October 14, asking the justices to skip the lower courts and rule directly on plate reader searches.
The petition names Green Bay, Milwaukee, Racine and Kenosha, each of which runs automated license plate readers and queries them. Lead petitioner is the Wisconsin Council of Churches, which represents more than 2,000 congregations, alongside an individual Green Bay resident.
Group members drive to services, to Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous meetings, to domestic violence programs and to political gatherings. Under the state constitution’s search and seizure clause, staff attorney Wes Haslam argues, police need a judge’s signature before pulling that movement history – or must show an emergency.
The filing does not ask Wisconsin to abolish the cameras. It asks for a procedural check on queries, the same standard the U.S. Supreme Court applied to phone location data years ago.
Ideological lines blurred on this one: last month the conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty advanced a parallel argument in its own Waukesha County suit.
Numbers support the concern. State officers have faced charges, or convictions, for mining plate reader databases to trail people they once dated. Enforcement agencies have ended Flock contracts, and the approach to safeguards varies from department to department.
Haslam calls that patchwork the reason the court must intervene. Whatever the outcome, a statewide warrant rule would reach every fleet operator and agency in Wisconsin that shares vehicle location data.
