Kansas v. Glover - Stops Based Upon Registered Owner Having Revoked DL

Today the Supreme Court of the United States announced an 8-1 decision upholding an officer's ability to make an investigative traffic stop after running the vehicle's license plate and finding the registered owner has a revoked driver license. The Court held when the officer lacks information negating an inference that the owner is the driver of the vehicle, the stop is reasonable under the Fourth Amendment. Justice Thomas authored the opinion for the Court, which all other justices aside from Justice Sotomayor joined in the opinion. In addition to joining with the majority opinion, Justice Kagan authored a concurring opinion, which Justice Ginsburg joined. Justice Sotomayor authored a dissenting opinion.

Facts:
No testimony was taken at the suppression hearing, but both parties stipulated to the following facts. On the date in question, Deputy was on routine patrol when he observed a pickup truck with a Kansas plate. Deputy ran the plate through the state's file service. The registration came back to a matching 1995 Chevrolet 1500 pickup truck. Kansas Department of Revenue files indicated the truck was registered to Glover. The files also indicated that Glover had a revoked driver’s license in the State of Kansas. Deputy assumed Glover was driving the vehicle. Deputy did not observe any traffic infractions, and did not attempt to identify the driver of the truck. Based solely on the information that the registered owner of the truck was revoked, Deputy initiated a traffic stop. The driver of the truck was identified as the defendant, Glover.

The case history was that the district court granted Grover's motion to suppress based upon lack of reasonable suspicion. The Kansas court of appeals reversed, stating the deputy had reasonable suspicion. The Kansas Supreme Court reversed the court of appeals and held that the deputy's belief that the registered owner was driving the vehicle as nothing more than a "mere hunch" and did not give rise to reasonable suspicion.

Decision:
SCOTUS noted the "less demanding" standard of reasonable suspicion and cited much precedent that establishes that the standard requires "considerably less than proof of wrongdoing by a preponderance of the evidence, and obviously less than is necessary for probable cause.” SCOTUS reaffirmed that this requires a reasonableness standard based upon considerations in every day life, not that of legal technicians.

In holding that there was reasonable suspicion, SCOTUS focused on the following three facts: First, he saw a vehicle being operated; next, deputy knew that according to the license plate, the registered owner of the vehicle had a revoked license; and finally, that the vehicle matched the description on the registration. The Court noted that deputy drew a commonsense inference that the registered owner would likely be driving the vehicle, and this "provided more than reasonable suspicion to initiate the stop." The fact that people that are not the registered owners of vehicles often drive them did not negate the deputy's reasonable inference, and SCOTUS reminded us that reasonable suspicion falls far short of 51% accuracy. Additionally, SCOTUS cited references showing that people with revoked licenses often continue driving, so the fact that Grover had a revoked license had no bearing on whether deputy's inference was reasonable. 

There was a large and helpful discussion on what experience is required to come to reasonable inferences under reasonable suspicion. It was reaffirmed that officers can draw on every day experiences, and are not required to draw only on law enforcement specific training and experience as the dissent suggests. Requiring such would defy "the commonsense understanding to commonsense." To be clear, the Court is not saying specialized training and experience have no place in criminal investigations. It simply said that these are not required in every instance.

Finally, there is a discussion of the limited nature of the opinion. As with other analysis, the reasonable inference made is based upon the totality of the circumstances. An example cited would be that if the registered owner of the vehicle was a 60 year old male, and the officer observed that the driver was a young female, the stop would not be justified at its inception. Or if the stop occurred and the officer becomes aware immediately that the driver is not the registered owner of the vehicle, without some other reasonable suspicion, the stop would need to terminate.

While Justice Kagan joined in Justice Thomas' opinion, she also wrote a concurrence that analyzed the facts in more depth. She noted specifically that Kansas very rarely revokes a driver license, and when it does, it is normally for repeated violations of traffic offenses. This information possessed by an officer in Kansas would lead to a more reasonable inference that a driver might ignore the fact that his license is revoked since he has shown a propensity to ignore other traffic offenses. She contrasted this with if the license was merely suspended, as the state suspends licenses for non-traffic offenses regularly. While the concurrence goes into depth on this differentiation, the majority opinion did not adopt this analysis fully, but opted for the more broad approach of totality of the circumstances.

Ultimately the holding of this case is pretty basic: If an officer runs a license plate and sees that the registered owner has a revoked driver license, absent further information to suggest otherwise, the officer may reasonably infer that the registered owner is driving the vehicle and may make an investigative traffic stop.

You may read the full opinion here: Kansas v Glover.