A federal jury has found that the Bexar County Sheriff’s Office violated a Texas motorist’s constitutional rights through an operation that used automatic license plate readers to identify vehicles as suspicious and target them for traffic stops and searches.
The verdict came in a lawsuit brought by Alek Schott, a Houston-area motorist who was detained for 76 minutes during a March 2022 traffic stop near San Antonio. Jurors awarded Schott the symbolic $76 he requested — one dollar for every minute he was detained.
But the case was about far more than the money.
Represented by the Institute for Justice, Schott argued that his stop was part of a broader Bexar County Sheriff’s Office practice of using automatic license plate reader data and other information about motorists’ travel patterns to identify supposedly suspicious vehicles, then finding a traffic violation as justification to pull them over.
A trip home turns into a 76-minute detention
Schott was driving home to Houston from a work trip on Interstate 35 when Bexar County Deputy Joel Babb pulled him over, alleging that Schott had crossed a fog line.
Before the traffic stop, however, Schott’s vehicle had already attracted the attention of law enforcement.
According to evidence in the case, his truck had been flagged through a network of automatic license plate readers, or ALPRs, and discussed in a WhatsApp group used by law enforcement personnel. His travel pattern, direction of travel and the fact that he had dropped off a female passenger at a hotel contributed to suspicions that the vehicle could be involved in smuggling.
Babb then parked along the highway and waited for Schott’s truck to pass.
The deputy claimed Schott drifted between lanes, but Schott’s dashcam footage later showed the truck remaining in its lane.
Babb ordered Schott out of the vehicle, frisked him and had him sit in the passenger seat of the patrol vehicle. The deputy questioned Schott about his trip, his job, his hotel stay, his criminal history, whether he was carrying cash and whether drugs were inside the truck.
A K-9 unit was eventually called to the scene.
The dog alerted to Schott’s truck, but footage presented in the case showed Deputy Martin Molina gesturing and making a sound immediately before the alert. Schott’s attorneys argued the action prompted the dog.
Deputies searched the truck for roughly 40 minutes and found nothing.
Schott was ultimately released after 76 minutes with a warning for failure to maintain a single lane.
Lawsuit challenged a broader surveillance operation
Schott filed a complaint with the sheriff’s office after the stop but said the department found no violation.
“The department reviewed it, told me they didn’t see any violation, and said if I had a problem with it, I should sue them. So, I did,” Schott said. “Today is vindication, not just for me, but for every driver they ran through this.”
That lawsuit became a challenge not simply to the actions of individual deputies, but to what Schott and the Institute for Justice said was a years-long BCSO operation.
Schott sued under Section 1983 of the Civil Rights Act, which allows local governments to be held liable when an official policy or established custom causes a constitutional violation.
His attorneys therefore had to demonstrate that his experience was not an isolated traffic stop.
During the trial, the Institute for Justice presented dozens of videos and law enforcement messages involving other motorists who were allegedly stopped and detained under similar circumstances. Attorney Christie Hebert said one example involved a hospice nurse who was stopped three times in a single day after her vehicle was flagged by an AI-enhanced license plate reader system.
“Officers have to actually have a belief that you are committing a crime, and these officers did not have that,” Hebert said during a Tuesday press conference. “The Fourth Amendment requires real reasons, real reason to stop, real reason to hold, and a real reason to search.”
The jury ultimately sided with Schott.
“This is a huge win, and not just for Alek,” Hebert said in an emailed statement. She said motorists around the country are increasingly being watched and flagged by camera systems before being stopped for alleged traffic violations that can serve as justification for questioning and searches.
“The Fourth Amendment does not permit this. Today a jury of Texans looked at how this program actually worked and said so. Every agency in this state should understand that we are fully prepared to enforce this verdict,” Hebert said.
License plate readers face growing scrutiny
The case lands amid a widening debate over how law enforcement agencies use automatic license plate readers.
The cameras can record license plates and other information as vehicles pass, allowing agencies to search collected data and potentially reconstruct where a vehicle has traveled.
Hebert said the Bexar County system involved technology supplied by Vigilant at the time of Schott’s stop. Flock Safety, another major provider of ALPR technology, has faced separate scrutiny as the use of license plate readers has expanded nationwide.
“We should emphasize that Alec was the victim of license plate reader tracking. The first step in this scheme was the fact that license plate readers, AI-powered license plate readers, were tracking normal American travel,” Hebert said.
She argued that communities need to determine whether such systems are serving legitimate public safety purposes or becoming part of a much broader surveillance network.
The legal boundaries surrounding that technology remain unsettled. Courts have wrestled with how Fourth Amendment protections developed for an earlier technological era apply when authorities can use networks of cameras and databases to track people's movements.
The controversy has also reached Congress. The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism recently held a hearing examining automatic license plate readers, including concerns surrounding Flock Safety systems. Lawmakers have introduced proposals aimed at regulating the technology, including U.S. Rep. Keith Self of Texas.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has also halted the use of certain public safety grant funding for Flock Safety cameras, while some local governments have terminated contracts or begun reviewing their use of the technology amid privacy concerns.
For Schott’s attorneys, the Bexar County verdict is not expected to be the end of the case.
Hebert and Institute for Justice senior attorney Jeff Rowes said they plan to ask U.S. District Judge Orlando Garcia for a permanent injunction. The organization also says it intends to challenge similar law enforcement practices elsewhere.
For Schott, meanwhile, the jury's $76 award carries a straightforward message: The value of the verdict was never measured by the size of the check. It was about whether police can use mass surveillance to decide someone looks suspicious and then search for a reason to stop them.
