Back in July, this series ended with a promise: track the Fourth Circuit appeal in Schmidt v. Norfolk, and track whatever state legislation landed on ICE access to license-plate data. Half a year later, both storylines have moved — just not toward resolution.
The appeal: fully briefed, still waiting
Chief Judge Mark Davis’s January 2026 ruling for Norfolk was never the last word — Lee Schmidt and Crystal Arrington appealed to the Fourth Circuit, with the ACLU filing an amicus brief. As of the most recent public docket activity, that appeal is fully briefed — both sides have made their case in writing — but no oral argument has been scheduled, and the appeals court hasn’t ruled.
The delay matters more than it looks, because the legal ground shifted underneath the case while it sat. Davis’s district-court ruling leaned on the idea that Norfolk’s roughly 175 camera clusters and 21-day data retention window didn’t add up to the kind of exhaustive tracking the Supreme Court worried about in Carpenter v. United States (2018). But the Supreme Court’s Chatrie v. United States ruling — decided in June 2026, after Davis’s opinion — held that Fourth Amendment protections for location data don’t hinge on how big or exhaustive a surveillance network is. Whenever the Fourth Circuit does rule, it will be applying a precedent that didn’t exist when the district court made its call.
Maryland passed a law. Nobody’s checking if it works.
Maryland passed two laws in early 2026 aimed squarely at the ICE-access problem: HB 444, signed February 17, banned Maryland agencies from entering 287(g) cooperation agreements with ICE and required existing ones to be terminated; and HB 711, the state’s Data Privacy Act, bars data controllers from knowingly selling personal information to any government unit engaged in civil immigration enforcement within the prior six months.
Here’s the gap: there is no public audit, lawsuit, or disclosed lookup count showing whether either law is actually being followed. No Maryland agency has published an independent compliance review. And neither bill can touch the one confirmed instance of federal immigration enforcement using Maryland’s camera infrastructure — the U.S. Park Police, a federal agency on federal land that state law simply has no jurisdiction to bind. Maryland wrote a wall. Nobody’s checked whether it’s load-bearing.
Colorado tried the toughest fix on the table. It died.
Senate Bill 26-70 was the most aggressive state proposal anywhere in this fight: a warrant requirement to search license-plate-reader data more than three days old, plus a 30-day cap on how long most data could be retained at all. It was bipartisan. It cleared a Senate committee in February.
It never reached a floor vote that stuck. Facing “fierce pushback” from law enforcement agencies and a veto threat from the governor’s office, the bill’s own sponsors pulled it from consideration in the final days of the 2026 session. It’s dead for this cycle — the same session that produced real ICE-access restrictions in Maryland and California instead produced, in Colorado, nothing.
The California lawsuit, meanwhile, keeps growing
The San Francisco class action alleging 1.6 million unauthorized federal and out-of-state queries of the city’s Flock network — filed in February against Flock Safety directly, under California’s ALPR Privacy Act — was amended and expanded in April to cover Flock’s tracking of “millions of Californians” statewide, not just San Francisco. California’s law entitles plaintiffs to $2,500 per violation; at 1.6 million alleged violations in one city alone, the theoretical exposure runs into the billions, though no judgment or settlement has been reached.
Where this actually stands
Nothing got resolved. The one court case that could set real Fourth Amendment precedent for this entire technology is sitting fully briefed with no argument date. The one state law specifically written to stop federal agencies from reaching into local camera networks has no mechanism to prove it’s working. And the one legislative proposal tough enough to actually change how long your movements get stored anywhere in the country didn’t survive contact with its own state’s law enforcement lobby. Flock’s cameras are still running. We’ll keep tracking the Fourth Circuit’s calendar and the next legislative session.
Sources:
- Fourth Circuit appeal status (fully briefed, no argument scheduled): Recording Law — Federal Appeals Court Weighs Norfolk’s Flock Camera Network; ACLU — Schmidt v. Norfolk
- Chatrie v. United States decided June 29, 2026: EFF — Victory! Supreme Court Says Constitution Protects People’s Location Data
- Maryland HB 444 and HB 711, enforcement gap: Maryland Bay News — Maryland Built a Legal Wall Against ICE Surveillance Data
- Colorado SB 26-70 death: Colorado Newsline — Colorado lawmakers kill bill to limit police use of Flock camera data
- San Francisco / statewide California class action against Flock Safety: KTVU FOX 2 — Class action lawsuit alleges Flock license plate readers violate CA law
- Original entry in this series: The Cameras Don’t Need a Warrant. That’s the Problem.