Justices Skeptical of Traffic Stop Argument

skeptical Supreme Court justices. A Kansas man claims that police violated the Fourth Amendment when an officer pulled him over after running the license plate on his truck and discovering its registered owner had his driver's license revoked without doing anything more. Joining me is Jordan Reuben, Bloomberg Law Legal Editor. Why did the court take this case? As with pretty much any case that the court takes, they take it

to resolve an issue that's unresolved around the country. And so here the question is whether it's reasonable for police to pull over a car just based on the fact that the cars interstered owner has their license revoked without any more information. And so whether it's because some justices wanted to take the case to say that it is reasonable,

or it isn't. At any rate, it's an issue that it seems that the court at least felt it was reasonable to want to clear up in this case, the registered owner's license was revoked and the officer stopped him driving his truck. What was the claim by the defense? So even though it was actually the registered owner of the car, Charles Glover, who was in fact driving the car, Glover raised the argument and a suppression motion that there wasn't a good enough reason for the officer to think

that it was Glover before he pulled him over. That's because all the officer did before pulling Glover's truck over was just run the license plate, at which point it showed that the registered owner, Glover, had his license revoked. But the officer didn't do anything more than that. He didn't try to confirm that it was Lover's identity first, or observe the traffic violation or anything like that. It was just the simple fact of Glover having his license revoked.

And Glover argues that that's simply not enough to amount to reasonable suspicion under the Fourth Amendment. So what should the officer have done. He's not supposed to stop the truck unless what what else was he supposed to do? Right? So that's the million dollar question that came up at the argument that Glover's lawyer didn't necessarily have a specific answer to other than to say there needs to be

something done. Obviously, one thing that was brought up was trying to visually check to see if it appears to be the same person, Say, if the registered owner appears to be a sixth year old man, if it looks like the driver is someone like that, then that would be an example of one other fact that, according to the dissenses argument, would amount probably too reasonable suspicion. The bottom line was, they said, it at least has to be something more than just the fact of the register

owner having their license revoked. Do we know what the officer did do? So it's a very good question, and it raises sort of a weird aspect of this case, which is that at the stage of the suppression motion,

the officer didn't testify to hearing. All we had were stipulated facts, meaning both parties, the prosecution and the defense, they agreed to a certain set of facts without testing them in the crucible of cross examination, and essentially what it boiled down to was simply the fact of the officer saying the car was driving, I ran the plate, it came back as a registered owner having license revoked, and that's it. So is it possible that the officer

did something else. Maybe, but really we're bound by this stipulation and the Supreme Court is bound by it too, And there was actually some frustration with that at the argument, and some of the justices saying, you know, it's sort of difficult for us to rule on this without having enough information. Now we're still waiting to see which way

that's going to cut. Obviously, one way to look at that is that it could cut potentially in favor of the defense, in the sense that they could send it back to the court to say, this is a situation where we just need more you know, we want officers to testify it hearings, to at least say, consistent with my experience or something like that, this is the type of thing where the registered owner usually is the driver,

for example. On the other hand, some of the other justices and perhaps a majority of the court seemed perhaps more likely to say, just based on common sense, it was a reasonable thing for the officer to do. The two words common sense came up a lot during the argument. But different members of the court and the different parties have different views of what exactly is common sense in

this situation. Chief Justice John Roberts seemed particularly exasperated. You said, do you think it's totally random who the driver is? In other words, it's registered to Fred Jones, but it could be anybody in the world. Yeah. So Chief Justice Roberts usually keeps a pretty even keel. He got sort of almost agitated during the argument and back and forth

with Glover's attorney Sarah Harrington. Roberts seemed to really buy into the state's common sense argument, and so he was getting frustrated in terms of trying to search for an answer of what more exactly was the officers supposed to do, including the question of what sort of probability can we attach to whether the registered owner is in fact the driver? And Roberts, as well as Justice Alito and some other justices, they were sort of frustrated at the defense essentially not

buying into the state's common sense argument. From their view, so now let's talk about the standard. The standard is reasonable suspicion, and that's a pretty low standard, it is, And so that came up during the argument as well. Of course, it's a point that the state pressed more vigorously than the defense did. Obviously, the defense doesn't want to highlight that it's a low standard. But the defense said, even under this low standard, this is and enough in

their view. And so obviously it's a point that the state wants to emphasize and saying the fact that reasonable suspicion is such a low standard, combined with this sort of common sense argument that it's at least reasonable for an officer to pull over a car that is being driven where the registered owner's license is revoked, at least to investigate more. In the words of Canvas lawyer's argument, it would have been bad police work for the cop not to pull the car over again, sort of going

towards this common sense type of argument. So Jordan's Justice Samuel Alito said about the decision they're going to issue that they could either issue a trivial decision or a revolutionary decision. Explain what he meant by that, sure, and this is Justice Alito, who is probably the least likely on the court to side with the criminal defense in

a criminal case. And what he was saying was this, He said, it could be a trivial decision in the sense that they could hold okay, all an officer had to do was additionally testify based on my training and experience, and Injustice Lados where its blah blah blah, essentially showing that he doesn't really think it's that's a good a deal.

On the other hand, it could be a revolutionary decision if they wind up having to say that certain probabilities and statistics are involved, or something as sort of mundane in Justice Leado's view anyway, as this sort of routine traffic stops. So when he called it a revolutionary from his view, that did not seem to be a laudatory way to put the defense's arguments. It's times like this that I wish we had the audio of the of

the Supreme Court arguments earlier than when they do. Let us hear it for sure, and that uh, and that'll be posted Friday at the end of every week. And there's also a good part of the audio I would say to check out for Justice Gorsage is impression or so it seems, of a New York City police officers.

That was another fun moment of it here he got called on that he did and then uh Glover's lawyer, Sarah Harrington told them this case was actually taking place in Kansas, not New York, and gorgeous, said touche, playhearted moment in the argument, finally, is it public safety on one side versus privacy on the other, Well, what Glover would probably say is that public safety doesn't have to be sacrificed in order to buy by the Fourth Amendment.

What the state is saying. They point to the fact that having unlicensed drivers on the road is a very dangerous thing, and that, in their views, sometimes making these traffic stops are really the only opportunity that law enforcement have in order to prevent fatalities. And so they even though this is sort of a routine, maybe seems like not such a big deal, you're just pulling a car over, from the government's view, it actually is something a lot

more serious than that. And at the same time, from the defense point of view, it's a lot more serious than the government is giving a credit for in its own right, And by that that's going to sort of the argument that if it isn't the person driving whose license is revoked, then they're being subjected to a seizure that they otherwise wouldn't be subjected to if an officer had attempted to confirm their identity first. So there are

those two arguments. On both sides. There certainly are competing interests, and we're just going to have to see what the court does with all that. Thanks Jordan's that's Jordan Reuben, Bloomberg Law Legal Editor. Thanks for listening to the Bloomberg Law Podcast. You can subscribe and listen to the show on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, and on Bloomberg dot com slash podcast. I'm June Brosso. This is Bloomberg Ye.