MARYVILLE, TN – Yesterday the City of Maryville Council discussed surveillance systems, like Flock Safety, at it regular scheduled workshop meeting. Police Chief Tony Crisp made a presentation on how the city is using its Flock System as a police tool. During his presentation the Chief made mention of the related City of Norfolk court case and how it upheld the use of the surveillance systems. What the Chief did not mention was that the case is currently under appeal.

Current Status of the Case

• Appellate Stage:Schmidt v. City of Norfolk is currently pending before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit (Case No. 26-1227).
• Briefing Completed: Following the district court’s adverse ruling in January 2026, the appellants (represented by the Institute for Justice) and the City of Norfolk completed their initial and response briefs through the spring. High-profile amicus curiae briefs were filed in April by groups like the ACLU, EFF, and the Cato Institute, followed by a state coalition brief in late June.
• Next Steps: The case is fully briefed and awaiting placement on the Fourth Circuit’s oral argument calendar or a decision on the merits from the appellate panel.

Description of the Case and the Institute for Justice’s Strategic Vision

The Challenge Against Mass Surveillance

Schmidt v. City of Norfolk began as a federal lawsuit filed by the Institute for Justice (IJ) on behalf of local Norfolk residents whose vehicles were photographed hundreds of times by a network of 176 fixed-location, AI-powered Flock Safety automated license plate reader (ALPR) cameras. The lawsuit challenges the city’s practice of systematically logging, storing, and creating searchable databases out of the daily travel movements of everyday drivers without a warrant or individualized suspicion.

The Lower Court Decision and Warning

U.S. District Judge Mark S. Davis granted summary judgment to the city, ruling that discrete snapshots from stationary cameras do not amount to a Fourth Amendment “search” because they lack continuous, real-time tracking capabilities. However, the lower court issued a stark warning that the dragnet system “ensnares an immense array of law-abiding citizens”, cautioned that expanding camera densities could eventually cross constitutional lines, and inadvertently provided privacy advocates with a clear judicial opening for appeal.

IJ’s Strategic Push Toward the Supreme Court

The Institute for Justice is deliberately utilizing Schmidt v. City of Norfolk—alongside similar challenges like its San Jose ALPR lawsuit—as part of its core strategic litigation initiative (The Plate Privacy Project) to force a showdown at the U.S. Supreme Court.

• Targeting the Fourth Amendment Precedent Gap: IJ aims to overturn lower court reliance on outdated “public visibility” doctrines. They argue that when municipal governments convert fleeting, everyday public travel into permanent, searchable, identity-linked digital archives, it mirrors the systematic tracking outlawed in landmark digital privacy cases like Carpenter v. United States.
• Building a Vehicle for SCOTUS Review: By pushing this case through the federal appellate courts, IJ is engineering a direct circuit split or a clean constitutional question regarding whether ubiquitous, automated public camera networks violate the Fourth Amendment. They intend to use this framework to secure a definitive Supreme Court ruling establishing that warrantless, mass-scale digital tracking of the driving public is unconstitutional.