New Jersey License Plate Reader Laws

Status at a glance

The Attorney General’s Directive

Most of New Jersey’s ALPR rules aren’t in a statute. They’re in Attorney General Law Enforcement Directive No. 2022-12, issued October 21, 2022, which took effect January 23, 2023 and replaced Directive 2010-5. A directive binds law enforcement agencies, but it’s not a statute. It says so itself: “Nothing in this Directive shall be construed in any way to create any substantive right that may be enforced by any third party.”

The Directive limits scanning to “vehicles that are exposed to public view.” It also addresses private data: private entities that have an agreement with New Jersey law enforcement may provide ALPR data to New Jersey agencies, and “Commercially obtained ALPR data shall not be co-mingled with law enforcement data.” See private and HOA cameras.

Permitted uses and stored data

• “An ALPR and the data it generates shall only be used for official and legitimate law enforcement purposes.”
• Stored non-alert data (reads that didn’t match a BOLO list entry) may be used only for “a BOLO query, a crime-scene query, and crime trend analysis,” plus system tests and troubleshooting.
• Crime-scene queries “may not be conducted to review data based on general crime patterns,” and a record must be kept of the specific crime, its date and location.
• The Directive continues to apply State v. Donis (1998), which limits access to personal identifying information tied to a plate “unless there is a particularized basis.”

Stops based on an alert

Under section 3.4.1, an officer alerted that a plate is on the BOLO list “may be required to make a reasonable effort to confirm that a wanted person is actually in the vehicle before the officer would have a lawful basis to stop the vehicle,” citing State v. Parks (App. Div. 1996). See ALPR alert traffic stops.

Retention: three years

“Records and ALPR data covered by this Section shall be retained for three years.” Stored data is purged after that, “unless it is associated with an active investigation or pending judicial process,” in which case it should be exported and kept in the case file. The Directive’s cover memo says this decreased retention from five years to three. Agencies must keep an automated record of all access to stored data, including the date and time, the justification for non-alert queries, and the accessor’s name. See ALPR data retention and sharing.

The 2026 sharing law

P.L.2026, c.4, approved March 25, 2026, includes an ALPR sharing provision in section 5(b). We took its text from a copy published by the State on a Department of the Treasury page. The act took effect immediately, except for a section unrelated to ALPRs. Under § 5(b)(1), “A government entity shall not sell, share, or transfer” ALPR information about the operation of a person’s vehicle except:

• to another government entity when permitted by law;
• under a valid judicial order or judicial warrant;
• with the written consent of the person the information concerns, under subsection c.; or
• to a law enforcement agency of another jurisdiction for a criminal investigation, if that agency certifies that the information won’t be used for civil immigration enforcement, won’t be shared, sold, transferred or made searchable by it, and that it is bound by the same restrictions that apply under New Jersey law.

Those certification agreements are government records under the Open Public Records Act (§ 5(b)(2)(a)). If an out-of-state agency misuses the information, the Attorney General may by order cut off sharing with it (§ 5(b)(2)(b)). A vendor’s role isn’t treated as sharing, provided the vendor doesn’t share or make the data searchable to others unless it meets the same requirements and has the entity’s authorization (§ 5(b)(3)). The statute’s definition of “Government entity” covers state agencies and political subdivisions, not private camera owners. The Directive separately says “Only federally recognized law enforcement agencies may receive access to a New Jersey agency’s ALPR data.” See can police search Flock data from other states?

Discovery, audits and enforcement

• Discovery. Stored ALPR data is treated as “criminal investigatory records” and isn’t shared outside law enforcement unless a subpoena or court order authorizes it or court rules on criminal discovery require it. “If the investigation results in criminal charges, the ALPR records shall be turned over in discovery pursuant to applicable court rules and case law.” See requesting ALPR records in discovery.
• Audits. “By January 31 each year, the Agency ALPR Coordinator shall perform an audit of their agency’s ALPR program.” By March 31, the State ALPR Coordinator publicly reports which agencies completed audits and the number of significant violations and citizen complaints.
• Enforcement. A knowing violation “shall be subject to discipline.” The Directive contains no exclusion rule, and as quoted above it creates no right a third party can enforce.

New Jersey’s broader constitutional protection

In State v. Manning (N.J. Jan. 13, 2020), the New Jersey Supreme Court recalled that “In Hunt, we concluded that the New Jersey Constitution provides greater protection to telephone communications than the Fourth Amendment as construed by the United States Supreme Court.” It also described State v. Earls (2013), which recognized “an expectation of privacy in cell-phone location information cognizable under the New Jersey Constitution.”

Manning held that the warrant requirement applied to cell-phone location information obtained in 2011, and that “under Article I, Paragraph 7, the exclusionary rule applies to unconstitutional searches and seizures of cell-phone records.” Because the State didn’t prove exigent circumstances for its warrantless request, the records had to be suppressed. Manning concerned cell-phone records, not ALPRs. We haven’t found a New Jersey decision applying this reasoning to ALPR data. See the mosaic theory.

What this can mean in a New Jersey case

• Was stored non-alert data queried, and for which of the Directive’s permitted purposes? What crime, date and location were recorded?
• For a stop on a BOLO alert, what was done to confirm the alert first?
• What do the access records show about who queried the data and why?
• Was the data shared with or obtained from an agency in another jurisdiction, and is there a § 5(b)(1)(d) certification?
• Did the conduct occur on or after March 25, 2026?
• Does use of the data raise an Article I, Paragraph 7 question separate from the Fourth Amendment?