Registered Owner Suspension Justifies Traffic Stop

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Today, the United States Supreme Court issued an interesting decision in a 4th Amendment case in Kansas v. Glover, 589 U.S. ____ (2020) (Docket No. 18-556).  The fact scenario centered around a common, yet oft litigated, circumstance.  A sheriff's deputy randomly ran the license plate of a truck he was behind.  The computer showed the truck belonged to Glover and also showed that Glover's license was revoked.  Assuming that Glover was driving, he stopped the truck.  Glover was driving and he was charged. The trial court granted Glover's motion to suppress any evidence discovered after the stop and dismissed the charges.  The Kansas Court of Appeals reversed. The Kansas Supreme Court reversed, finding that the stop violated the Fourth Amendment.

The USSC, Justice Thomas writing for the majority, held:

When the officer lacks information negating the inference that the owner is driving the vehicle, an investigative stop made after running the vehicle's license plate and learning that the registered owner's driver's license has been revoked is reasonable under the Fourth Amendment.

The Court emphasized the narrowness of the decision, however.  Because the standard of reasonableness takes into account the totality of the circumstances, the presence of additional facts might negate the reasonableness of the stop.  For example, if the officer knows that the registered owner is a male in his mid sixties, he would be unjustified in stopping the car if he saw that the driver was female in her mid twenties.  Because the deputy in this particular case possessed no information negating the plausible inference that the registered owner was driving, the stop here was reasonable.

Justice Kagan, joined by Justice Ginsberg, concurred in the result here, but for a more specific reason.  The concurrence came to hold the stop reasonable for an additional important fact that is particular to Glover:  the deputy also knew from the database that Glover was a habitual violator who had been convicted a number of times previously for driving on a revoked license.  He had a proclivity for violating the driving laws.  Absent that additional fact, the concurrence concluded that it is a coin toss to conclude that the registered owner is driving.  Maybe the owner will drive regardless of the suspended license, or, on the other hand, maybe the threat of punishment for driving without a valid license is enough of a deterrence that it is reasonable to conclude that the registered owner is not driving.

Justice Sotomayor dissented.  She argued that, in order to justify the stop of the vehicle, the burden is on the state to demonstrate that the particular officer based his decision to stop the vehicle on his  own experience in law enforcement, rather than concluding, as the majority did, that it is simply common sense to conclude that the registered owner is the driver.  Common sense should not be universally applied by the Court in order to cover the entire universe of situations where the registered owner also has a suspended license.

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