⚖ Oral Arguments, with Context

After postal worker Tamara Clayton was fatally shot on a highway, Illinois funded a network of license-plate cameras for crime investigations. Hundreds lined Cook County expressways when this suit began, recording passing plates with a time and location; state police say they keep the records for up to 90 days. Two Cook County drivers, Stephanie Scholl and Frank Bednarz, sued, arguing that gathering those snapshots across many roads tracks their movements without a warrant. They did not allege police had looked up their own histories; the district judge dismissed their challenge to camera collection and said a future database lookup was too speculative to challenge. The appeal asks whether systematic collection itself is a Fourth Amendment search, even before an officer pulls up a stored record. Reilly Stephens of the Liberty Justice Center represents the drivers and will argue that the network's scale makes this more than an ordinary glimpse of a passing car.

Scholl v. Illinois State Police (No. 25-1847) — U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, argued September 29, 2026.