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U.S. District Court, N.D. Okla.

United States v. Kyle

Whether a month of warrantless plate-reader history is a Fourth Amendment search.

Docket

No. 4:26-cr-00189-SEH

Judge
Judge Sara E. Hill
Where it stands
Motion to suppress granted Oct 1, 2026 (Doc. 62). The Oct 6 trial was stricken; Kyle was released on conditions Oct 5.

Next · not settled

Any government appeal to the Tenth Circuit

A government appeal of a suppression order is normally due within 30 days. No notice of appeal as of Oct 9, 2026.

Sealed or restricted

  • Doc. 48 (defense filing, Aug 3, 2026)
  • Doc. 56 (government motion, Aug 26, 2026)

Pending

  • Whether the government appeals the suppression order.

Docket timeline

  1. 2026-08-03

    Kyle moves to suppress (Doc. 47).

  2. 2026-08-27

    Evidentiary hearing on the motion.

  3. 2026-10-01

    Opinion and order granting suppression (Doc. 62).

  4. 2026-10-02

    Oct 6 jury trial stricken (Doc. 66).

  5. 2026-10-05

    Detention order vacated; released on conditions (Docs. 69-71).

as of 2026-10-09

Documents

Entries in the record

Oct 1, 2026 · Tulsa, OKverifiedU.S. v. Kyle: federal judge holds a warrantless month of plate-reader history unconstitutionalA federal judge in Oklahoma ruled that a sheriff's deputy needed a warrant before pulling up a month of a driver's movements from Flock and another plate-reader system. He ran the search only because her car had a California plate. The judge called the camera networks a form of "indiscriminate mass surveillance" and threw out the evidence. Most courts that have ruled on plate readers have gone the other way, and the judge says so.

United States v. Melisa Susan Kyle, No. 4:26-cr-00189-SEH (N.D. Okla.), Document 62, Judge Sara E. Hill. A Tulsa County deputy who has served as a DEA task-force officer saw a rental Mazda with a California plate, followed it "for no apparent reason other than the fact that it had a California license plate," and queried two plate-reader systems, Flock and VehicleManager. They returned about a month of the car's travel, including a short trip to the California/Arizona border and back. He stopped Kyle for following too closely, gave her a warning, and then held her for a dog sniff after she refused a search.

The court suppressed the evidence on two independent grounds. First, the stop was lawful, but the deputy extended it without reasonable suspicion. Second, the plate-reader search was itself a Fourth Amendment search, made without a warrant or probable cause. Reading Carpenter and Chatrie, the court held that drivers have a reasonable expectation of privacy in "the whole of their physical movements," and called the networks "a type of indiscriminate mass surveillance."

It is one district court. The order says it departs from "nearly every court examining the issue to date," including three other Oklahoma federal courts, and that neither the Tenth Circuit nor the Supreme Court has decided the question. As of Oct 9, 2026, the trial had been cancelled, Kyle was released on conditions, and no appeal had been filed.

How we know: Opinion and order read in full from the court record (Oct 9, 2026), with the docket. The evidence was suppressed on two independent grounds; the plate-reader holding is one of them. The 91 pounds of methamphetamine some outlets report is not in the order and is not used here. One district court; the government may still appeal.

Full record →checked v3.33

“Alaniz's search in just the ALPR system provided him with more than 50 individual records of Kyle's whereabouts across the country for an entire month.”
Judge Sara E. Hill, Doc. 62
“It is not too much to draw the line at indiscriminate mass surveillance.”
Judge Sara E. Hill, Doc. 62

Source chain

  1. 01U.S. v. Kyle, No. 4:26-cr-00189-SEH, Doc. 62, opinion and order (N.D. Okla. Oct. 1, 2026)primarydocket 4:26-cr-00189-SEHdocument (PDF)
  2. 02CourtListener docket 73367327primarydocket 4:26-cr-00189-SEHlink being reconstructed