Tulsa County, Oklahoma: a federal judge ruled on 1 October 2026 that a sheriff's deputy's warrantless search of a driver's month-long location history in the Flock and VehicleManager licence-plate-reader systems, run because her car had California plates, violated her Fourth Amendment rights, and suppressed all evidence obtained after the search; she had been held in pretrial detention since May

The opinion (United States District Court for the Northern District of Oklahoma, Case No. 26-CR-00189-SEH, filed 1 October 2026) describes how a Tulsa County deputy sheriff, parked beside a highway, saw an SUV with a California licence plate, followed it 'for no apparent reason other than the fact that it had a California license plate', and ran the plate through the Flock system; the deputy had access to two ALPR systems, Flock and VehicleManager, which gather and organise historical data about a vehicle's whereabouts. He stopped the car for changing lanes without a signal, questioned the driver about her travel while reviewing the ALPR results, asked for consent to search, and when she refused told her she was detained so his dog could sniff the car; the dog alerted and the search resulted in her arrest. 404 Media reports that 91 pounds of methamphetamine were found.

The court held that the stop was justified at its inception but unlawfully extended, and separately that the deputy's use of the ALPR systems was an unconstitutional warrantless search. It found the ALPR search provided 'more than 50 individual records' of her whereabouts across the country for an entire month, intruded on her reasonable expectation of privacy in the whole of her physical movements, was run only because the plate was from California, and was not supported by probable cause. It ordered all evidence obtained after the ALPR search was initiated suppressed as fruit of the poisonous tree. The court also noted that the ALPR results were consistent with her account of her travel. Docket entries show she was ordered detained pending trial in May 2026. On 1 October her lawyer filed an unopposed motion to revoke the detention order, stating that the evidence the court relied on in detaining her is not admissible. Flock told 404 Media it was not a party, that the ruling goes against the weight of authority, and that it expects the ruling to be appealed and overturned.

A federal court found that a deputy's warrantless search of a driver's month-long location history in licence-plate-reader systems violated her Fourth Amendment rights; the arrest and the evidence on which she was held in pretrial detention since May flowed from the stop the court tied to that search. The privacy violation is established by the court; the evidence itself was found in her car and the prosecution's next step is not yet known.

The court granted her motion to suppress on 1 October 2026, holding the deputy's warrantless ALPR search unconstitutional and suppressing all evidence obtained after the search began (it also found the stop was unlawfully extended). The same day her lawyer filed an unopposed motion to revoke the detention order. Flock says it expects an appeal; the ruling does not bind other courts.