Opinion ID: 3049447
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The License Plate Check

Text: Diaz-Castaneda first contends that Helzer’s check of Diaz’s truck’s license plate was an unreasonable search because Helzer had no articulable suspicion of any wrongdoing when he initiated the check. Diaz-Castaneda is correct that Helzer does not appear to have had any reason to run the check. Indeed, at the suppression hearing, Helzer explained why he thought he had probable cause to stop the vehicle after checking its license plate, but offered no explanation for why the check was conducted in the first place. Although running the check simply because Diaz and Diaz-Castaneda were His8704 UNITED STATES v. DIAZ-CASTANEDA panic males would raise serious questions, Diaz-Castaneda’s claim founders because we hold that a license plate check does not qualify as a search under the Fourth Amendment. [2] No binding decision of this court has addressed whether license plate checks constitute Fourth Amendment searches. Cf. Hallstein v. City of Hermosa Beach, 87 Fed. App’x. 17, 19 (9th Cir. 2003) (unpublished) (“Nor does Hallstein have a reasonable expectation of privacy in information he voluntarily exposed to other people, such as his license plate. . . . [A]s Hallstein does not claim that the data stored in the DMV and police department databases were acquired by those institutions in violation of his Fourth Amendment rights, he cannot complain under the Fourth Amendment about access to that information by others.”); United States v. $277,000 U.S. Currency, 941 F.2d 898, 901 (9th Cir. 1991) (holding that individual had no “legitimate expectancy of privacy” in backyard where cars were parked and thus “cannot contest the observation of the covered vehicles or the fact that they had Mexican license plates”). However, every circuit that has considered the issue in a precedential opinion has held that license plate checks do not count as searches under the Fourth Amendment. See United States v. Ellison, 462 F.3d 557, 561 (6th Cir. 2006); Olabisiomotosho v. City of Houston, 185 F.3d 521, 529 (5th Cir. 1999); United States v. Walraven, 892 F.2d 972, 974 (10th Cir. 1989); cf. United States v. Sparks, 37 Fed. Appx. 826, 829 (8th Cir. 2002) (unpublished); 1 Wayne R. Lafave, Search & Seizure § 2.5(b) (4th ed. 2004) (“[I]t is apparent that when a vehicle is [at a] location where it is readily subject to observation by members of the public, it is no search for the police to look at the exterior of the vehicle.”). [3] We agree that people do not have a subjective expectation of privacy in their license plates, and that even if they did, this expectation would not be one that society is prepared to recognize as reasonable. Cf. Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 361 (1967) (Harlan, J., concurring) (setting forth criteria for searches under Fourth Amendment). First, license plates UNITED STATES v. DIAZ-CASTANEDA 8705 are located on a vehicle’s exterior, in plain view of all passersby, and are specifically intended to convey information about a vehicle to law enforcement authorities, among others. No one can reasonably think that his expectation of privacy has been violated when a police officer sees what is readily visible and uses the license plate number to verify the status of the car and its registered owner. See Ellison, 462 F.3d at 561-62. Second, a license plate check is not intrusive. Unless the officer conducting the check discovers something that warrants stopping the vehicle, the driver does not even know that the check has taken place. See Walraven, 892 F.2d at 974. Third, the Supreme Court has ruled that people have no reasonable expectation of privacy in their vehicle identification number (VIN), which is located inside the vehicle but is typically visible from the outside. See New York v. Class, 475 U.S. 106, 113-14 (1986). If it was not a Fourth Amendment search when the police officers in Class opened a car’s door and moved papers obscuring the VIN, it surely also was not a search when Helzer ran a computerized check of Diaz’s license plate. We are sympathetic to the concerns raised in dissent by