Thursday, a Santa Clara Superior Court will decide if a lawsuit alleging San Jose misused automated license plate readers can go forward.
In November of 2025, two San Jose nonprofits filed suit against the city, the Mayor’s office, and the Police Department.
The central issue is warrantless searches of the license plate reader database. Sayra Hussain, a lawyer for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, says that violates the California Constitution.
"There are ways to challenge this sort of mass surveillance that's taking place," said Hussain, "and the way that we're doing it is by challenging these retrospective searches."
In a statement emailed to KALW, the San Jose Police Department declined to comment on the prospective litigation.
The Mayor's office did not respond to KALW in time for broadcast, but in an emailed statement said that San Jose has "built in robust data privacy and security measures throughout our ALPR system, including regular deletion of collected data that is not being actively used in an investigation."
According to court filings, San Jose has used license plate readers since 2006, when the city first installed cameras on top of police cars. In 2022, the city started installing fixed license plate cameras on street corners.
Today, there are 474 plate readers across the city operated by Atlanta-based Flock Safety.
Flock has received national scrutiny after reporting from 404 media revealed that federal agencies like ICE were able to access its data last year. In March, the San Jose City Council voted to restrict Flock usage after public outcry. So far this year, nine California cities have cancelled Flock contracts.
Thursday's hearing in Santa Clara County Superior Court is scheduled for 9:00 a.m.
