# California court dismisses challenge to San Jose license plate searches

_Published Tuesday, October 13, 2026 at 2:14 PM EDT · Policy, Products · Latest · Tier 2 — Notable_

![California court dismisses challenge to San Jose license plate searches — Primary](https://www.eff.org/files/banner_library/flock-vector-2b.png)

A California trial court dismissed a challenge to San Jose's warrantless searches of automatic license plate reader data, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which represents the plaintiffs with the ACLU of Northern California. EFF says it will appeal. The court found no reasonable expectation of privacy when driving on public roads.

San Jose's cameras continuously photograph passing cars and retain the data for a month or longer. A federal district court in Oklahoma reached a different conclusion a day before the California ruling: it found that an officer's warrantless database search violated the Fourth Amendment. That search exposed at least 30 days of vehicle movements across at least three states.

## Sources

- [Deeplinks](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/10/federal-court-rules-alprs-are-mass-surveillance-eff-gets-disappointing-ruling)

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Canonical: https://techandbusiness.org/newswire/BD1c8EJiKA_NTDLX1V4tLa
Published: 2026-10-13T18:14:01.377Z
Story chronology: 2026-10-13T17:19:19.000Z
Retrieved: 2026-10-13T21:03:03.810Z
Publisher: Tech & Business (techandbusiness.org)