Standing to Challenge ALPR Evidence in Borrowed and Rental Cars

What “standing” means here

Before a court decides whether police violated the Fourth Amendment, it asks whether the person challenging the search had a protected interest of their own. The Supreme Court has said that “Fourth Amendment rights are personal rights which… may not be vicariously asserted.” Courts often call this “standing,” though technically it’s part of the Fourth Amendment analysis itself.

This matters for ALPR cases because the data is about a vehicle, and the person charged isn’t always the vehicle’s owner. Whose privacy interest was affected can decide whether a challenge to an ALPR search can proceed at all.

Passengers and other people’s cars

In Rakas v. Illinois (1978), passengers in a car they didn’t own, who claimed no property or possessory interest in it or in the items seized, couldn’t challenge a search of the glove compartment and the area under the seat. Being lawfully present wasn’t enough by itself.

Rental cars: Byrd v. United States

In Byrd v. United States (2018), a woman rented a car and gave the keys to Terrence Byrd, who wasn’t listed on the rental agreement. Troopers stopped and searched it. A unanimous Supreme Court held that “the mere fact that a driver in lawful possession or control of a rental car is not listed on the rental agreement” doesn’t defeat an otherwise reasonable expectation of privacy. The Court rooted this in lawful possession and the right to exclude others.

It also drew a line: a car thief has no such expectation. And it left open whether someone who uses a third party to rent a car by fraud is “no better situated than a car thief,” sending that question back to the lower courts.

An ALPR case: United States v. Yang

United States v. Yang (9th Cir. 2020) is one of the few federal appeals decisions directly about an ALPR search. A postal inspector located Jay Yang and a rented SUV by querying a private license plate database, Vigilant Solutions’ LEARN, which collects images from cameras mounted on tow trucks, repossession vehicles and police cars. The SUV was about six days overdue, and the rental company had tried to repossess it.

The panel held that Yang had no reasonable expectation of privacy in the vehicle’s historical location data after failing to return it on time, where the rental company had no policy of letting renters keep cars late and simply charging them. So he lacked standing to challenge the warrantless database search, and the court affirmed the denial of his motion to suppress.

Judge Bea concurred in the result but disagreed on standing. He would have affirmed because the database search “did not reveal the whole of the defendant’s physical movements,” echoing the reasoning in Carpenter and McCarthy.

Yang is binding only in the Ninth Circuit, and it turned on the overdue-rental facts. It doesn’t decide whether an ALPR database search is a search for someone driving their own car.

Borrowed and shared cars

Many people drive cars registered to a partner, parent or friend. Under Byrd’s reasoning, lawful possession and control can support an expectation of privacy even without a formal agreement. Whether it does in a particular case depends on the facts: permission, how often the person drives the car, and whether they had the keys and the ability to exclude others. Courts in different jurisdictions apply these principles differently.

Shared cars also cut the other way. When several people drive a vehicle, a camera record of it is weaker evidence of who was behind the wheel. See vehicle identification is not driver identification.

Questions a defense attorney may investigate

• Who owned or rented the vehicle, and what was my right to use it at the time?
• If it was a rental, was it within the rental period? What were the company’s policies on late returns?
• If it was borrowed, can permission and regular use be shown?
• Whose data was searched: a single plate, or a broader query?
• Does state law give broader protection than federal law on this question?