Court Opinion

ID: 9499202
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 17:40:49.68701+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:59:20.836871
License: Public Domain

KAREN NELSON MOORE, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
The majority’s decision is a textbook example of a court reaching to resolve an issue that is not properly before it. The majority opinion highlights how a court can undermine just results by choosing to address an argument — that an officer can run a license plate number through a computer database search without any heightened suspicion — despite its being raised for the first time on appeal without the legal or factual development necessary to resolve the issue. Because I believe that we cannot consider this matter on a ground raised by the government for the first time here on appeal without contravening this court’s longstanding precedent, I respectfully dissent. I also write to express my concerns regarding the majority’s conclusory gloss on the Fourth Amendment issues implicated by the license-plate database search and my disagreement with the majority’s analysis of the equal protection claim.
I. BACKGROUND
On December 31, 2003, Officer Mark Keeley (“Keeley”) of the Farmington (Michigan) Police stopped Curtis Ellison’s vehicle, in which Ellison was riding as a passenger. During this stop, firearms were found on Ellison, and he was charged with being a felon in possession of a firearm in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g). Ellison moved to suppress the firearms evidence, claiming that the circumstances of the stop violated the Fourth Amendment. The government claimed that there was probable cause for the stop because the driver of the vehicle, Edward Coleman (“Coleman”), had committed a parking violation. After a suppression hearing, the district court ruled that Coleman had not committed a parking violation, and thus that the evidence should be suppressed as the fruit of an illegal stop. On appeal, the government abandoned its argument that there was probable cause to stop the vehicle based upon a parking infraction. Instead, the government argues, for the first time, that the license-plate database search conducted from the officer’s car did not implicate the Fourth Amendment and thus that the stop was independently justified by the information regarding Ellison’s outstanding felony warrant that was discovered through the license-plate search. I will refer to this newly minted Fourth Amendment argument as the “license-plate search argument.”
II. FOURTH AMENDMENT CLAIM
A. Consideration of an Argument Raised for the First Time on Appeal
The majority’s reaching out to decide this Fourth Amendment question on a basis that the government failed to raise below contradicts legal authority, the interests of justice, and the principle of judicial restraint. Relying on Pinney Dock, the majority decides that the government’s argument warrants an exception to the general rule that arguments not raised below will not be considered on the grounds that it raises a purely legal issue that has been “ ‘presented with sufficient clarity and completeness’ to ensure a proper resolution” and that “failing to consider the issue would result in a plain miscarriage of justice.” Majority Opinion (“Maj. Op.”) at 560 (quoting Pinney Dock & Transp. Co. v. Penn Cent Corp., 838 F.2d 1445, 1461 (6th Cir.1988)). However, the majority’s conclusion misconceives the governing precedent and the nature of the issue before us.
*565First, in its attempt to fit the license-plate search argument within the parameters of the Pinney Dock exception, the majority misapplies Pinney Dock. Pinney Dock held that this court generally will not consider issues not addressed below, except for “ ‘exceptional cases or particular circumstances,’ ” or when adherence to the rule would result in “ ‘a plain miscarriage of justice.’ ” 838 F.2d at 1461 (quoting Hormel v. Helvering, 312 U.S. 552, 557, 61 S.Ct. 719, 85 L.Ed. 1037 (1941)) (emphasis added). In Pinney Dock, we decided to address the new issue for two reasons: (1) because it was “presented with sufficient clarity and completeness,” and (2) because “its resolution w[ould] materially advance the progress of this already protracted litigation.” 838 F.2d at 1461. Neither of these conditions applies to the government’s license-plate search argument. Based on the majority’s incomplete view of how the license-plate search implicates the Fourth Amendment, its cursory conclusion that this is a pure legal issue “ ‘presented with sufficient clarity and completeness,’ ” Maj. Op. at 561 (quoting Pinney Dock, 838 F.2d at 1461), may appear correct at first blush. However, once the issue is framed accurately, that is, as a question of not just the plain view of the license plate but also the Fourth Amendment implications of conducting a subsequent search with the license-plate information on the computerized Law Enforcement Information Network (“LEIN”),1 it becomes clear that there are a multitude of fact questions that are essential to the resolution of this issue. For example, to assess properly the Fourth Amendment concerns raised by the use of the LEIN system, any court would need to know what type of information is available on the system; how this information is obtained; who can access the information; what safeguards, if any, are in place to prevent unauthorized access to the information; whether this information was available to police prior to the advent of the mobile data terminal (“MDT”)2; what the typical police practice is regarding the use of such searches; whether there are any procedures in place to guard against arbitrary searches; what options are available to regulate the use of the technology; what the government’s interests are in conducting license-plate searches; what alternative practices could be used to achieve the same ends; the error rates associated with the use of the MDT technology; what practices, if any, are in place to ensure reliability and guard against errors; and the implications that such technology has for racial profiling. There is little to no information in the record on these topics,3 nor did the parties brief the *566issue with these concerns in mind, and thus the court is ill-equipped to address the government’s newly raised license-plate search argument. That answers to these factual questions are essential to addressing the Fourth Amendment issues implicated by the license-plate search becomes even more clear in the later discussion of the legal and factual assumptions the majority makes regarding the information available from the LEIN search.
Finally, the majority’s assertion that “failing to consider the issue would result in a plain miscarriage of justice” because it would “allow! ] a conclusion of law to stand that is clearly in error” is also misconceived. Maj. Op. at 561. Because this issue was not raised below, the district court merely stated in passing, without any detailed discussion or analysis, that the use of the LEIN search was improper because Ellison’s van was not actually parked illegally. Dist. Ct. Op. at 8. Because both parties assumed that the LEIN check constituted a search for Fourth Amendment purposes, the district court had no occasion to consider the Fourth Amendment issues raised by the LEIN search, and thus its statement cannot be considered a legal conclusion on the matter. Rather, the statement simply highlights that the district court also adopted the parties’ assumption, which the court needed to do to address the narrow issue before it, i.e., whether a parking violation had occurred. Therefore, no “plain miscarriage of justice,” would result from us declining to address this issue. See United States v. Brignoni-Ponce, 422 U.S. 873, 886 n. 11, 95 S.Ct. 2574, 45 L.Ed.2d 607 (1975) (refusing to address “after-the-fact justification” for a search that was not clearly raised below). Despite having the opportunity to respond to this point, the majority makes no attempt to clarify its argument and merely clings to the unfounded assertion that an erroneous legal conclusion would stand were this court not to address the license-plate search argument. Given that no erroneous legal conclusion would be left standing were this court to decline to consider the license-plate search argument presented initially to us by the government, it would be a greater “miscarriage of justice” for this court to address this issue prematurely, without the legal and factual development necessary to resolve it. The majority’s willingness to consider the license-plate search argument without fully contemplating the legal and factual questions it raises emphasizes the gaps in the majority’s reasoning and the reach of its approach.
B. Merits of the Fourth Amendment Claim
Although I believe that the government’s license-plate search argument is not properly before this court and thus should not be considered, the majority’s decision compels me to highlight the shortcomings of its woefully incomplete Fourth Amendment analysis. The majority rests its conclusion that the Fourth Amendment was not implicated by the LEIN search on the relatively uncontroversial fact that the operator of a vehicle has no privacy interest in the particular combination of letters and numerals that make up his license-plate number, but pays short shrift to the crucial issue of how the license-plate information is used. Based on this half-conceived understanding of the issues presented by the LEIN search, the majority then unconvincingly pins its conclusion on New York v. Class, 475 U.S. 106, 106 S.Ct. 960, 89 L.Ed.2d 81 (1986), which deals only with the physical search of the interior of a car to determine a VIN number and does *567not address the issue of the use of such a number to ascertain other information associated with the vehicle or its operator.4 This approach misses the crux of the issue before the court: even if there is no privacy interest in the license-plate number per se, can the police, without any measure of heightened suspicion or other constraint on their discretion, conduct a search using the license-plate number to access information about the vehicle and its operator that may not otherwise be public or accessible by the police without heightened suspicion?
Although neither the posture of this issue nor the record before us allows for consideration of the Fourth Amendment implications raised by the LEIN search, it is worthwhile to spell out some of the Fourth Amendment concerns that the use of such technology raises, as no court of appeals has yet done so. The use of a computer database to acquire information about drivers through their license-plate numbers without any heightened suspicion is in tension with many of the Fourth Amendment concerns expressed in Delaware v. Prouse, 440 U.S. 648, 655-63, 99 S.Ct. 1391, 59 L.Ed.2d 660 (1979) (cited with approval in Whren v. United States, 517 U.S. 806, 817-18, 116 S.Ct. 1769, 135 L.Ed.2d 89 (1996)). In Prouse, the Supreme Court held that an officer may not stop a vehicle to check the operator’s license and registration without “at least articulable and reasonable suspicion that a motorist is unlicensed or that an automobile is not registered, or that either the vehicle or an occupant is otherwise subject to seizure for violation of law,” despite the fact that the state requires drivers to be licensed and vehicles to be registered. 440 U.S. at 663, 99 S.Ct. 1391. The Court stated that the Fourth Amendment aims “to safeguard the privacy and security of individuals against arbitrary invasions.... Thus, the permissibility of a particular law enforcement practice is judged by balancing its intrusion on the individual’s Fourth Amendment interests against its promotion of legitimate governmental interests.” 5 Id. at 654, 99 S.Ct. 1391 (internal quotations and citations omitted). The Court then explained the constitutional *568concerns that flow from the unbridled discretion associated with permitting random searches of drivers’ information:
To insist neither upon an appropriate factual basis for suspicion directed at a particular automobile nor upon some other substantial and objective standard or rule to govern the exercise of discretion “would invite intrusions upon constitutionally guaranteed rights based on nothing more substantial than inarticulate hunches .... ” Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. [1], at 22, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 [1968].... When there is not probable cause to believe that a driver is violating any one of the multitude of applicable traffic and equipment regulations — or other articulable basis amounting to reasonable suspicion that the driver is unlicensed or his vehicle unregistered — we cannot conceive of any legitimate basis upon which a patrolman could decide that stopping a particular driver for a spot check would be more productive than stopping any other driver. This kind of standardless and unconstrained discretion is the evil the Court has discerned when in previous cases it has insisted that the discretion of the official in the field be circumscribed, at least to some extent....
An individual operating or traveling in an automobile does not lose all reasonable expectation of privacy simply because the automobile and its use are subject to government regulation. Automobile travel is a basic, pervasive, and often necessary mode of transportation to and from one’s home, workplace, and leisure activities. Many people spend more hours each day traveling in cars than walking on the streets. Undoubtedly, many find a greater sense of - security and privacy in traveling in an automobile than they do in exposing themselves by pedestrian or other modes of travel. Were the individual subject to unfettered governmental intrusion every time he entered an automobile, the security guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment would be seriously circumscribed.
Id. at 661-63, 99 S.Ct. 1391.
Although the license-plate search at issue here is arguably less invasive than a license-and-registration check, the constitutional concerns regarding abuse of discretion do not disappear simply because drivers are not stopped to conduct the license-plate search. First, a search can implicate the Fourth Amendment even when the individual does not know that she is being searched.6 Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 357-59, 88 S.Ct. 507, 19 L.Ed.2d 576 (1967). Second, the balancing of Fourth Amendment interests also requires consideration of “psychological intrusion[s] visited upon” the individuals searched in assessing the extent of intrusion that a particular police practice imposes. See Prouse, 440 U.S. at 657, 99 S.Ct. 1391. The psychological invasion that results from knowing that one’s personal information is subject to search by the police, for no reason, at any time one is driving a car is undoubtedly grave. See Sam L. Amirante, People v. Barnes— George Orwell’s 1984 Revisited: Unbridled and Impermissible Police Use of Computer Power in the Modem Age, 28 Loy. U. Chi. L.J. 667, 676-77 (1997); Darlene Ce-drés, Mobile Data Terminals and Random License Plate Checks: The Need for Uniform Guidelines and a Reasonable *569Suspicion Requirement, 23 Rutgers Computer & Tech. L.J. 391, 405 (1997).
Because the government incorrectly limits its Fourth Amendment analysis to the plain view of the license plate without exploring the constitutional implications of the subsequent LEIN search, it does not provide any explanation as to the governmental interests promoted by license-plate searches. However, the government’s potential interest in law enforcement would not, without more, justify the intrusion, as “[t]he needs of law enforcement stand in constant tension with the Constitution’s protections of the individual against certain exercises of official power. It is precisely the predictability of these pressures that counsels a resolute loyalty to constitutional safeguards.” Almeida-Sanchez v. United States, 413 U.S. 266, 273, 93 S.Ct. 2535, 37 L.Ed.2d 596 (1973).7 Nor could an interest in public safety alone legitimate the practice of random license-plate searches. In Prouse, the Supreme Court held that the suspicionless license-and-registration check was an “[unsufficiently productive mechanism” to support the government’s asserted interest in public safety because it provided little benefit beyond “[t]he foremost method of enforcing traffic and vehicle safety regulations ..., acting upon observed violations[,]” and thus the additional intrusion into drivers’ privacy was not justified. 440 U.S. at 659, 99 S.Ct. 1391. Therefore, the Court concluded that “[t]he marginal contribution to roadway safety possibly resulting from a system of spot checks cannot justify subjecting every occupant of every vehicle on the roads to a seizure — limited in magnitude compared to other intrusions. but nonetheless constitutionally cognizable — at the unbridled discretion of law enforcement officials.” Id. at 661, 99 S.Ct. 1391.
In addition, the possibility and the reality of errors in the computer databases accessed by MDT systems lead to great concern regarding the potential for license-plate searches to result in unwarranted intrusions into privacy in the form of stops made purely on the basis of incorrect information. See Albert J. Meehan & Michael C. Ponder, Race and Place: The Ecology of Racial Profiling African American Motorists, 19 JUST. Q. 399, 407 n. 8 (2002) (stating that MDT “error is particularly serious, since evidence suggests that the ‘benefit of the doubt’ in questionable circumstances is usually given to the computer,” and “fewer than half the 50 states require updating criminal history files to include dismissals and acquittals,” “only 13 states require random audits to ensure accuracy,” but “all the states require the entry of arrests”); Cedrés, at 401-02 (noting that “much of the information contained in public databases is inaccurate or outdated”). Although more data is necessary to assess the rate of errors using license-plate searches, this has been raised as a serious concern by a number of justices in Arizona v. Evans; 514 U.S. 1, 115 S.Ct. 1185, 131 L.Ed.2d 34 (1995), which considered whether the exclusionary rule applied to contraband discovered during an arrest resulting from erroneous infor*570mation derived from an MDT search.8 Justice Ginsburg discussed the dangers associated with the use of MDT technology:
Widespread reliance on computers to store and convey information generates, along with manifold benefits, new possibilities of error, due to both computer malfunctions and operator mistakes. Most germane to this case, computerization greatly amplifies an error’s effect, and correspondingly intensifies the need for prompt correction; for inaccurate data can infect not only one agency, but the many agencies that share access to the database. The computerized data bases of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s National Crime Information Center (NCIC), to take a conspicuous example, contain over 23 million records, identifying, among other things, persons and vehicles sought by law enforcement agencies nationwide.... NCIC information is available to approximately 71,000 federal, state, and local agencies.... Thus, any mistake entered into the NCIC spreads nationwide in an instant. Isaac Evans’ arrest exemplifies the risks associated with computerization of arrest warrants. Though his arrest was in fact warrantless[,] ... the computer reported otherwise. Evans’ case is not idiosyncratic.
Id. at 26-27, 115 S.Ct. 1185 (Ginsburg, J., joined by Stevens, J., dissenting on the basis of whether there was an independent and adequate state law ground for the state court’s decision) (citations omitted); see also id. at 17-18, 115 S.Ct. 1185 (O’Connor, J., joined by Souter & Breyer, JJ., concurring) (asserting that the police’s reliance on “powerful, computer-based recordkeeping systems that facilitate arrests” places on the police “the burden of corresponding constitutional responsibilities,” including implementing a “mechanism to ensure [the recordkeeping system’s] accuracy”); id. at 22-23, 115 S.Ct. 1185 (Stevens, J., dissenting) (emphasizing “that computer error poses ... [an] appreciable threat to Fourth Amendment interests,” and expressing outrage at the notion of arrests resulting from computer error). Although these computer databases are used for a variety of purposes, allowing the information contained therein to form the basis for a seizure without any other heightened suspicion, let alone probable cause, compounds the risk of privacy intrusions that errors in these databases impose. The majority’s hasty approach to the license-plate search argument without the necessary legal and factual development is all the more inappropriate in the face of these serious countervailing constitutional concerns.
In attempting to counter the Fourth Amendment concerns raised by the use of suspicionless license-plate searches, the majority repeatedly asserts facts and states legal principles that are entirely unsupported. For example, the majority states that there is “no privacy interest in the information retrieved by Officer Keely. The obvious purpose of maintaining law enforcement databases is to make information, such as the existence of outstanding warrants, readily available to officers carrying out legitimate law enforcement duties.” Maj. Op. at 562. The majority offers nothing to support these assertions. Indeed, given that the district court properly found that there was no probable cause to stop the vehicle based upon a *571parking infraction, it cannot be said that the officers were “carrying out legitimate law enforcement duties.” The majority then relies on these unsupported statements to assume that all of the information retrieved from the LEIN search is “non-private.” Id. The only support the majority offers here is a footnote mentioning— but explicitly not relying on — a website of the Michigan State police. However, as explained earlier, there is minimal evidence in the record and no explanation in the briefs as to what information is available from the LEIN search, and we simply do not know who ordinarily has access to the information retrievable from the LEIN search. The majority also asserts that “[t]he technology used in this case does not allow officers to access any previously-unobtainable information; it simply allows them to access information more quickly.” Maj. Op. at 563. The majority makes no effort to support this assertion, and there is no evidence in the record regarding the sort of information accessed from a license-plate search using an MDT as compared to the information accessible to the police prior to the advent of this technology. Again, the majority’s assumption contravenes the available information, which suggests that the MDT technology transformed, in practice, the amount and nature of information accessed by the officer in the field. See Meehan & Ponder, at 406-07; Cedrés, at 397-98. These unresolved factual questions are precisely why we should not, and indeed cannot, address this newly raised issue for the first time on appeal.
The majority also makes legal assumptions that are without- any authority. The majority does not explain its assertion that the LEIN search only permits officers to access already accessible information more quickly, let alone does the majority specify through which procedure the police are permitted to access this information or provide any legal authority to support the conclusion that these other unspecified procedures do not implicate the Fourth Amendment. The majority simply presumes, without any analysis or citation to authority, that the information that is accessible through a LEIN search is otherwise available to the police without any heightened suspicion. The New Jersey Supreme Court, in addressing a challenge to random MDT searches as violative of the New Jersey Constitution, held that suspicionless searches using MDTs gave police unwarranted access to private information and thus that the MDTs must be reprogrammed so that officers could only access personal information if the officer’s inquiry revealed a reason for further police action, for instance, if the vehicle had been reported stolen. Donis, 723 A.2d at 40. The New Jersey Supreme Court therefore acknowledged that there was a privacy interest in the information that police could obtain through an MDT search: the court stated that “[wjith the reprogrammed MDTs, police officers who were using MDTs at random and who lacked suspicion could access only non-private information.” Id.; see also Kevin C. Wille, State v. Donis: The New Jersey Supreme Court Turns Its Back While Police Conduct Random Mobile Data Terminal Searches, 17 J. MaRshall J. Computek & Info. L. 1235, 1252 (1999). As the New Jersey Supreme Court makes clear, mere prevalence of a practice is insufficient to support its constitutionality, particularly when the practice has not been challenged. See Donis, 723 A.2d at 40.
In sum, in light of these significant Fourth Amendment concerns outlined above, it is wholly unwise to reach out to address the government’s newly minted license-plate search argument and to decide the issues as the majority has done. I would leave the question to be resolved in *572a case where it is properly raised, developed with supporting evidence, and briefed and resolved first in the district court.
III. FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT RACE DISCRIMINATION CLAIM
Ellison argues that even if the license-plate search did not violate his Fourth Amendment rights, it would violate his right to equal protection if the officers conducted the license-plate search because he is black.9 Police crime-detection activity that does not implicate the Fourth Amendment can violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment if that activity is motivated by race. See Farm Labor Organizing Comm. v. Ohio State Highway Patrol, 308 F.3d 523, 533 (6th Cir.2002); United States v. Avery, 137 F.3d 343, 352-53 (6th Cir.1997); United States v. Travis, 62 F.3d 170, 173-74 (6th Cir.1995). This court has held that a consensual search, which itself does not violate the Fourth Amendment, violates the Equal Protection Clause if it was initiated on the basis of race. Travis, 62 F.3d at 173-74. We extended this Fourteenth Amendment protection to an officer’s decision regarding whom to target for surveillance, explaining that “[cjitizens are cloaked at all times with the right to have the law applied to them in an equal fashion — undeniably, the right not to be exposed to the unfair application of the laws based on their race.” Avery, 137 F.3d at 353. Just as “all individuals possess the constitutional right to equal protection as they walk through America’s airports,” so too do individuals possess the right to equal protection as they operate cars on America’s thoroughfares. Id. at 353-55. An unpublished opinion of this court recognized the application of the Equal Protection Clause to the circumstances now before us: license-plate searches conducted on the basis of race. See United States v. $11,000.00 in U.S. Currency, No. 98-4380, 2000 WL 222587, at *3 n. 2 (6th Cir. Feb.14, 2000).
The majority rejects Ellison’s constitutional race discrimination claim because, in its view, “the record is completely devoid of any evidence that the officer ran the LEIN check because the driver was black.” Maj. Op. at 563 n. 4. This assertion ignores circumstantial evidence in the record that Keeley may have zeroed in on Ellison because of his race and our prior admonition that “[ojften it is difficult to prove directly the invidious use of race,” and thus “ ‘an invidious discriminatory purpose may often be inferred from the totality of the relevant facts....’” Avery, 137 F.3d at 355 (quoting Washington v. Davis, 426 U.S. 229, 242, 96 S.Ct. 2040, 48 L.Ed.2d 597 (1976)).
Keeley’s asserted reason for running the LEIN check on Ellison, the parking violation, was found to be untrue by the district court. Dist. Ct. Op. at 7-8. While Keeley claimed that the van was blocking a fire lane and blocking traffic, Keeley testified that he took no action to notify the driver *573of the van of this civil infraction to rectify the situation. J.A. at 77 (Keeley Hr’g Tr. at 44). Although Keeley claimed that he took no action because “at times people drop people off and they quickly get in, get back into the vehicle or proceed to the nearest parking location,” J.A. at 78 (Kee-ley Hr’g Tr. at 45), this also conveniently allowed Keeley time to run the LEIN search of the van’s license plate. If Kee-ley’s concern was the parking violation and the blocked fire lane and traffic, there is no reason why he would not want to try to get the vehicle to move immediately.10 The implausibility of Keele/s explanation and the district court’s finding that he was not credible suggests that there was another motivation for Keele/s actions.
Moreover, Keeley concluded that Coleman, the driver of the van, closely resembled the description of the owner of the vehicle that he obtained from the license-plate search because, as Keeley testified, they had “the same build, black males, approximately the same age.” J.A. at 79, 83 (Keeley Hr’g Tr. at 46, 50). However, it was dark outside and Coleman was seated, so Keeley could not have easily seen his build or age. J.A. at 79-80, 146 (Keeley Hr’g Tr. at 46-47, 113). Therefore, the only matching characteristics are race and gender, and this suggests that Keeley was stereotyping on the basis of race. Particular attention should be paid to racial profiling claims where, as here under the majority’s view, the police’s discretion is unconstrained by a heightened suspicion requirement to target a driver for search. See, e.g., Pennsylvania v. Mimms, 434 U.S. 106, 122, 98 S.Ct. 330, 54 L.Ed.2d 331 (1977) (Stevens, J. dissenting) (warning that “eliminating] any requirement that an officer be able to explain the reasons for his actions ... leaves police discretion utterly without limits,” which will result in “[s]ome citizens ... be[ing] subjected to ... [an] indignity while others — perhaps those with more expensive cars, or different bumper stickers, or different-colored skin — may escape it entirely”); United States v. Harvey, 16 F.3d 109, 112-15 (6th Cir.1994) (Keith, J., dissenting) (discussing how excessive police discretion leads to race-based traffic stops); United States v. Harvey, 24 F.3d 795, 796 (6th Cir.1994) (Keith, J., dissenting from denial of rehearing en banc) (same); id. at 798-99 (Jones, J., dissenting from denial of rehearing en banc) (same); David A. Harris, “Driving While Black” and All Other Traffic Offenses: The Supreme Court and Pretextual Traffic Stops, 87 J.Crim. L. & Criminology 544 (1997) (same); cf. Blakely v. Washington, 542 U.S. 296, 315-16, 124 S.Ct. 2531, 159 L.Ed.2d 403 (2004) (linking, in sentencing context, unfettered discretion to race-based decisionmaking) (O’Connor, J., joined by Rehnquist, C.J., Breyer & Kennedy, JJ., dissenting); Tuilaepa v. California, 512 U.S. 967, 991-92, 114 S.Ct. 2630, 129 L.Ed.2d 750 (1994) (Blackmun, J., dissenting) (explaining that “unguided discretion” of jurors risks that the discretion will be exercised on the basis of race); Batson v. Kentucky, 476 *574U.S. 79, 105-06, 106 S.Ct. 1712, 90 L.Ed.2d 69 (1986) (Marshall, J., concurring) (highlighting, in the context of juror selection, how wide prosecutorial discretion can result in racially motivated decisions that are easy to justify on other grounds); Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238, 364-65, 92 S.Ct. 2726, 33 L.Ed.2d 346 (1972) (Marshall, J., concurring) (explaining that “ ‘untrammeled discretion’ ” of jury in determining application of death penalty leads to decisions made on the basis of race (quoting McGautha v. California, 402 U.S. 183, 207, 91 S.Ct. 1454, 28 L.Ed.2d 711 (1971))).
The government does not respond to Ellison’s racial profiling claim. Officer Keeley testified that he conducted the LEIN check on Ellison’s vehicle because “the vehicle was parked illegally.” J.A. at 49 (Hr’g Tr. at 16). However, the district court found that Ellison’s vehicle was not parked illegally, and the government does not appeal this finding. Because this asserted reason for the LEIN search was discredited and indeed rejected by the district court, the government’s race-neutral reason drops away, and Ellison’s circumstantial evidence supports the inference that race motivated Officer Keeley’s decision to conduct a LEIN search on the vehicle. See Furnco Constr. Corp. v. Waters, 438 U.S. 567, 577, 98 S.Ct. 2943, 57 L.Ed.2d 957 (1978) (explaining that “we know from our experience that more often than not people do not act in a totally arbitrary manner, without any underlying reasons,” and thus, after a prima facie case of discrimination has been made, “when all legitimate reasons for [a given action] have been eliminated as possible reasons for the [action], it is more likely than not the [decisionmaker], who we generally assume acts only with some reason, based his decision on an impermissible consideration such as race”). Ellison has presented sufficient evidence in support of his racial profiling claim to warrant a remand to the district court to conduct an evidentiary hearing on this matter.
IV. CONCLUSION
Because courts are governed by the principle of judicial restraint, I would decline to consider the government’s Fourth Amendment argument raised for the first time on appeal and would affirm the district court’s judgment granting Ellison’s motion to suppress on the basis of the district court’s credibility determination that no parking violation had occurred. Therefore, I respectfully dissent.

. This aspect of the license-plate search is addressed more fully in the main text below.

. A mobile data terminal ("MDT”) is a "remote portable computer” that "enables the transmission of data between the MDT and a host computer system,” allowing the police access to a multitude of information about a vehicle and its owner by entering in the vehicle's license-plate number. See generally Darlene Cedrés, Mobile Data Terminals and Random License Plate Checks: The Need for Uniform Guidelines and a Reasonable Suspicion Requirement, 23 Rutgers Computer & Tech. L.J. 391, 395-97 (1997). MDTs can access databases such as those maintained by a state's department of motor vehicles and the FBI’s National Crime Information Center ("NCIC”). Id. at 396. The information accessible by a license-plate search using an MDT can include the vehicle's registration information and the driver’s name, address, social security number, license status, prior arrests, convictions, outstanding warrants, and even age, physical characteristics, and race. See id. at 396-97; New Jersey v. Donis, 157 N.J. 44, 723 A.2d 35, 36 (N.J.1998).

.Although there is a brief exchange at the suppression hearing regarding the information that Keeley obtained from the LEIN system, J.A. at 94-97 (Keeley Hr’g Tr. at 61-64), it is insufficient to analyze the Fourth Amend*566ment issues implicated by the license-plate search.

. Therefore, Class is not controlling on the question before this court, and the outcome in this case is governed by no prior precedent. The only other cases cited by the majority are decisions of our sister circuits and the unpublished opinions of this court, each of which is considered only insofar as it is persuasive. None of these cases relied on by the majority is persuasive. In one such case, the license-plate information there was not run through a computer system. United States v. Matthews, 615 F.2d 1279, 1285 (10th Cir.1980). In another case, which is unpublished, the court was faced with a question similar to the one here, but the analysis was inadequate, resting only on the conclusion that there is no privacy interest in the license-plate number without providing any Fourth Amendment analysis regarding the information’s further use in the computer search system. See United States v. Sparks, 37 Fed.Appx. 826, 829 (8th Cir.2002). The remaining courts of appeals opinions, two of which are unpublished, address the crucial question of the use of the license-plate information to conduct an additional search in just one sentence and without citation to any authority. See United States v. $14,000 in U.S. Currency, No. 98-4380, 2000 WL 222587, *3 (6th Cir. Feb. 14, 2000); Hallstein v. City of Hermosa Beach, 87 Fed.Appx. 17, 19 (9th Cir.2003); 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). The perfunctory and conclu-sory treatment of the issue leaves these cases devoid of any ability to persuade.

. The Court later explained that such a balancing analysis for Fourth Amendment claims is appropriate where the search or seizure was not justified by probable cause or was "conducted in an extraordinary manner.” Whren, 517 U.S. at 817-18, 116 S.Ct. 1769. A balancing analysis is proper for this claim because the LEIN search was conducted without probable cause.

. Therefore, the attempt by two of our sister circuits to justify license-plate searches on the basis that unless the search results in suspicious information, the subject of the search "remains unaware of the check and unencumbered,” Walraven, 892 F.2d at 974; Olabisiomotosho, 185 F.3d at 529, is unavailing.

.
"These [Fourth Amendment rights], I protest, are not mere second-class rights but belong in the catalog of indispensable freedoms. Among deprivations of rights, none is so effective in cowing a population, crushing the spirit of the individual and putting terror in every heart. Uncontrolled search and seizure is one of the first and most effective weapons in the arsenal of every arbitrary government."
Almeida-Sanchez, 413 U.S. at 274, 93 S.Ct. 2535 (quoting Brinegar v. United States, 338 U.S. 160, 180, 69 S.Ct. 1302, 93 L.Ed. 1879 (Jackson,. J., dissenting)).

. The Court in that case had no occasion to consider the constitutionality of the use of MDT technology to conduct random license-plate searches because the stop in that case was justified by a traffic violation and the MDT search was conducted after Evans was stopped and told the officer that his license was suspended. See Evans, 514 U.S. at 4, 115 S.Ct. 1185.

. It is appropriate for us to consider this argument even if Ellison did not raise it below. "[T]he general rule ... that a federal appellate court does not consider an issue not passed upon below ... applies to a party seeking reversal.” Pinney Dock, 838 F.2d at 1461 & n. 16. " 'The prevailing party may ... assert in a reviewing court any ground in support of his judgment, whether or not that ground was relied upon or even considered by the trial court.’ ” Id. at 1461 n. 16 (quoting Dandridge v. Williams, 397 U.S. 471, 475 n. 6, 90 S.Ct. 1153, 25 L.Ed.2d 491 (1970)). On this basis, we have previously held that an appellee can raise an argument in support of the judgment that was not raised below. W.G. Fairfield Co. v. Occupational Safety & Health Review Comm'n, 285 F.3d 499, 504 (6th Cir.2002).

. Keeley testified that he had issued parking tickets to others who had committed parking violations in the parking lot where he found Ellison’s van. J.A. at 105 (Keeley Hr'g Tr. at 72). It is not clear from the record whether Keeley treated Coleman, the driver of the van, any differently than other drivers who had committed the same type of infraction, as the questions and answers on this subject are opaque. The district court asks Keeley, regarding those to whom he had issued parking tickets, “[a]nd of those people that you drove by, they didn't move and so you waited to see if they would move?” J.A. at 105 (Keeley Hr’g Tr. at 72). Keeley responds in the affirmative and testifies that he stopped them later. Id. It is not clear whether “stopped them later” means within the parking lot or after the vehicle left the parking lot, and before or after running a license-plate search.