A Green Bay pastor and the Wisconsin Council of Churches are asking the state's highest court to force police departments to get a warrant before digging through license plate reader data, arguing that the data could reveal whether congregants attend Sunday services. The petition targets automatic license plate reader systems operating in Green Bay, Milwaukee, Racine and Kenosha, and it lands at a moment when Wisconsin communities from Sheboygan to Milwaukee County are already yanking the cameras down over privacy fears.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Wisconsin and the Electronic Frontier Foundation filed the case on behalf of the Wisconsin Council of Churches, which represents more than 2,000 congregations statewide, and Green Bay pastor Melissa Pagel. As reported by WTAQ, the groups asked the Wisconsin Supreme Court to require warrants for searches of automatic license plate reader data, arguing the cameras collect information that can later be searched by law enforcement without judicial oversight.
ACLU of Wisconsin attorney Wes Haslam said jurisdictions across the country share this information, meaning any police department or government entity that receives it can use the data to track an individual's location history. Haslam pointed specifically to the churches' own programs, including Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and domestic violence support groups, saying people attending those services reasonably expect the government will not be monitoring their attendance.
A Warrant Requirement, Not a Camera Ban
The lawsuit does not ask courts to ban the cameras outright. Instead, the ACLU is seeking a warrant requirement for government use of ALPR camera data, arguing the technology infringes on privacy rights when agencies can query historical location records without independent review. Haslam said the suit seeks judicial restraints on mass surveillance technology and pushes back on the idea that law enforcement can be trusted to police itself, pointing to a pattern of officers misusing the data in Wisconsin, notably for stalking.
That pattern has concrete local history. Officers in Kenosha and Menasha faced criminal misconduct charges in 2026 after investigators alleged they used Flock camera databases off-duty to track private individuals, including ex-partners, according to prior Hoodline reporting. The Milwaukee Police Department itself cut the number of officers authorized to access its Flock database from 370 down to 100 in May 2026 following internal inquiries into unauthorized searches.
Flock Points to Dozens of Favorable Rulings
Green Bay's cameras are supplied by Flock Safety, and the city of Green Bay said it does not comment on pending litigation. Flock, in a statement, said its readers capture only still, point-in-time images of vehicles visible in public, including license plates and limited vehicle characteristics, and that the cameras do not use facial recognition or identify who is inside a vehicle.
The company said more than 45 courts have already determined that fixed license plate readers do not violate the Fourth Amendment or track the whole of an individual's movements. Flock cited a recent win in California, where a Santa Clara County judge dismissed a lawsuit brought by the ACLU of Northern California and the Electronic Frontier Foundation challenging San José's warrantless ALPR searches. That dismissal, detailed by OFFICER Magazine, found that motorists lack a reasonable expectation of privacy in license plate images recorded on public streets. Flock said it supports clear legislation establishing accountability, oversight and responsible data practices for license plate reader use.
Federal Courts Are Split on the Core Question
The California ruling is not the final word nationally. A U.S. District Judge in the Northern District of Oklahoma ruled on October 1 in United States v. Kyle that a police officer's warrantless search of a driver's historical license plate reader data via Flock Safety violated the Fourth Amendment, according to Digital Watch. That decision sets up a direct split between state and federal courts over whether assembling scattered camera snapshots into a searchable location history crosses into a constitutional search.
Legal challenges like the one playing out in Wisconsin lean heavily on the U.S. Supreme Court's 2018 decision in Carpenter v. United States, which found that long-term, aggregated location tracking violates reasonable expectations of privacy even when individual public movements do not, per the Brennan Center for Justice. The Wisconsin petition rests on a similar theory under the Wisconsin Constitution: the question isn't whether a camera can photograph a plate on a public street, but whether stockpiling millions of those photos into a searchable history requires a warrant.
Opposition Spans the Political Spectrum
The ACLU and EFF aren't alone in challenging Flock's reach in Wisconsin, and the opposition doesn't fall along predictable political lines. The conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty filed its own lawsuit on September 10 against Waukesha County and 11 municipalities, alleging outside law enforcement agencies ran roughly 3 million warrantless queries on local Flock camera data over a three-month span in 2026, as detailed by Police1.
Municipal governments have moved faster than the courts in some cases. Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley signed legislation this week barring Flock cameras from all county parks over privacy concerns, according to a report from WTMJ. That follows a string of local pullbacks across the state this year: Sheboygan removed all 15 of its cameras, Stevens Point suspended its 10, and Dane County defunded its contract, developments Hoodline has tracked in a series of stories this year.
Congress Weighs Tying Highway Funds to Restrictions
The scrutiny has reached Capitol Hill as well. Representatives Raja Krishnamoorthi, a Democrat from Illinois, and Michael Cloud, a Republican from Texas, introduced the bipartisan No FLOCK Act on September 15, which would direct the U.S. Secretary of Transportation to withhold 10% of federal surface transportation funding from states that fail to restrict automated license plate readers to five approved public-safety uses, according to the office of Congressman Krishnamoorthi.
For now, the fate of Wisconsin's warrant requirement rests with the state's highest court, which must decide whether to even accept the petition before the case can move forward. The ACLU says it hopes the case leads to greater transparency and accountability in how law enforcement deploys the technology.
