A federal jury has found Bexar County liable for running an unconstitutional traffic-stop program built around license-plate surveillance, siding with a Houston man who was pulled over on Interstate 35, held for 76 minutes, and searched for nothing. Jurors awarded Alek Schott $76 — a dollar for every minute he says he lost on the shoulder of the highway in March 2022.
A Flagged Truck, a Fruitless Search
Schott was driving home from a business trip in March 2022 when a network of cameras operated by the federal government flagged his Ford F-250 as suspicious, according to the Institute for Justice. A Bexar County deputy then pulled him over on I-35. Per the Institute for Justice, Schott was held on the shoulder for 76 minutes, interrogated in the front seat of a patrol car, and had his truck searched after a drug dog alerted. Deputies, the organization says, found nothing, because there was nothing to find.
The March 16, 2022 stop reportedly began after a deputy alleged that Schott drifted over the fog line. The Institute for Justice's case page states that video from Schott's own dashcam shows he was not drifting at any point during the trip. Schott sued Bexar County, and the case landed in federal court, where jurors ultimately found that the county had violated his constitutional rights through the surveillance-driven program, as reported by WOAI.
Five Steps, One Verdict
According to the Institute for Justice, the unconstitutional program ran in five steps: drivers were flagged through license-plate surveillance based on travel patterns, deputies then looked for a traffic violation to justify a stop, drivers were pulled over and questioned, and a K-9 alert was used to justify a search. Schott's attorneys, Institute for Justice lawyers Christie Hebert and Jeff Rowes, argued the entire sequence existed to manufacture pretexts for warrantless searches rather than to enforce traffic law.
Jurors sided with Schott, awarding him $76 — the group notes that figure represents one dollar for every minute he spent detained on I-35. The Institute for Justice says it will now ask the court to enjoin Bexar County from using baseless traffic stops as a tool for warrantless searches going forward.
The Paper Trail Behind the Verdict
Schott's fight with the county stretches back years before Monday evening's verdict. He filed his federal complaint for declaratory, injunctive and retrospective relief on June 1, 2023, according to the case docket on CourtListener. The case was assigned to U.S. District Judge Orlando L. Garcia and referred to Magistrate Judge Richard B. Farrer, the docket shows.
A Legal Fight Playing Out Nationwide
Schott's case lands amid a broader, unsettled legal debate over automated license-plate readers. The technology is now standard equipment for American policing — 173 law enforcement agencies scanned 2.5 billion plates in 2016 and 2017 alone, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, which also reports that 93 percent of police departments in cities of 1 million or more residents run their own ALPR systems. Separately, the Congressional Research Service cites Bureau of Justice Statistics figures showing nearly 90 percent of sheriffs' offices with 500 or more sworn deputies use the technology, with all departments serving over 1 million residents doing the same.
Courts have largely declined to treat ordinary ALPR scanning as a Fourth Amendment search. Massachusetts' highest court found in Commonwealth v. McCarthy that cameras at the two bridges onto Cape Cod did not amount to a search even though investigators pulled roughly three months of crossings, per Wisconsin Right Now. A Central District of California judge reached a similar conclusion in United States v. Riley, finding the searches there less extensive than the tracking at issue in the Supreme Court's Carpenter decision. And in October 2025, the Virginia Court of Appeals reversed a Norfolk ruling that had suppressed Flock camera evidence, with Judge Randolph Beales writing that the cameras only capture plates and vehicles already in public view. Wisconsin Right Now counts more than 45 federal and state rulings reaching that same bottom line.
Not every legal challenge has gone the same direction. The Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty has argued that police should generally need a search warrant before using the Flock Location Database to reconstruct someone's movements over time — a distinction that separates a single camera snapshot from a stitched-together travel history. That tension between one-time plate reads and long-term location tracking is central to the debate playing out in Schott's case and others like it.
Congress and Local Governments Take Notice
The scrutiny has reached Capitol Hill. The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism held a hearing on automated license-plate readers the week before Schott's verdict, according to The Texan. The outlet also reports that multiple local governments have terminated contracts or ordered reviews of the technology amid concerns over privacy and potential abuse. Part of that concern stems from retention practices: the Brennan Center notes that many cities and agencies keep plate data for future use, sometimes indefinitely, which can allow a vehicle's locations and routes to be mapped over time.
For now, the jury's $76 verdict stands as a rare instance of a driver successfully challenging a camera-driven stop in court — even as the broader question of when, if ever, police need a warrant to use this technology remains unresolved nationwide.
