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LEADERS OF A BEAUTIFUL STRUGGLE, ET AL. V. BALTIMORE POLICE DEPARTMENT, ET AL.
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The Brennan Center, in conjunction with the Electronic Frontier Foundation and
others, filed an amicus brief urging the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the
Fourth Circuit to rehear a case challenging the Baltimore Police Department’s
Aerial Investigation Research (AIR) pilot program on Fourth Amendment grounds.
Last Updated: December 7, 2020
Published: December 7, 2020
* Download Brief
* Protect Liberty & Security
* Privacy & Free Expression
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* Privacy & Free Expression
Update: On June 24, 2021, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth
Circuit, sitting en banc, reversed the panel decision and awarded a preliminary
injunction to community activists from Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle, finding
that the Baltimore Police Department’s (BPD) Aerial Investigation Research (AIR)
pilot program violated the Fourth Amendment.
In the majority opinion written by Chief Judge Roger Gregory, the
court held that even though the pilot program was discontinued, the Plaintiffs’
claims were not moot because some data was retained from the program. The
court went on to overturn the district court’s ruling, explaining that “because
the AIR program enables police to deduce from the whole of individuals’
movements, we hold that accessing its data is a search, and its warrantless
operation violates the Fourth Amendment.” The opinion stated that AIR data
“surpass[es] the precision even of GPS data and CSLI” as used in U.S.
v. Carpenter and is “more like ‘attach[ing] an ankle monitor’ to every person in
the city.”
In a separate concurrence, Chief Judge Gregory emphasized both that high rates
of violent crime in certain neighborhoods of Baltimore are the product of racism
and chronic underinvestment in communities, and that over-surveilling and
policing those neighborhoods is an inadequate solution. We are glad to see this
ruling and extension of Carpenter, and the affirmation of Americans’ right to
live free from indiscriminate aerial surveillance. Read the court’s
opinion here.
Background:
On April 9, 2020, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and ACLU of Maryland
filed a lawsuit against the Baltimore Police Department challenging the
constitutionality of the department’s Aerial Investigation Research (AIR) pilot
program, a long-term, wide-area aerial surveillance program that can record the
movements of virtually all of Baltimore’s residents at once. The plaintiffs for
the case include Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle, a grassroots think tank
advancing the public policy interests of Black people in Baltimore; Erricka
Bridgeford, co-founder and co-organizer of the Baltimore Ceasefire 365 project;
and Kevin James, an information-technology professional and community organizer.
In the lawsuit, the ACLU argued that the AIR program undermines the rights to
privacy and free association and constitutes a search under the First and Fourth
Amendments of the U.S. Constitution. The U.S. District Court for the District of
Maryland disagreed, concluding that the AIR program could legally continue. Read
the Court’s opinion here.
On April 30, 2020, the ACLU appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth
Circuit. The ACLU argued that the acquisition of location information through
wide-area aerial surveillance is a Fourth Amendment search and that, contrary to
the District Court’s decision, the Supreme Court’s ruling in Carpenter v. United
States does implicate the AIR program, which is significantly more invasive than
the other brief, targeted aerial observations permitted in the past.
On November 5, 2020, a panel of three Fourth Circuit judges handed down a
divided opinion upholding the District Court’s decision. The majority found that
the AIR program does not violate a reasonable expectation of privacy and is a
reasonable “programmatic search” under the “special needs” doctrine. In dissent,
Chief Judge Gregory explained that he would have reversed the District Court and
preliminarily enjoined the AIR program. He concluded that because the AIR
program does amount to long-term surveillance, effecting a Fourth Amendment
search, Carpenter controls the outcome of the case.
On November 19, 2020, the plaintiffs filed a petition for rehearing en banc,
asking that all 15 active circuit judges rehear the case and overturn the panel
opinion.
On November 25, 2020, the Brennan Center, Electronic Frontier Foundation,
Electronic Privacy Information Center, FreedomWorks Foundation, National
Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, and Rutherford Institute filed
an amicus brief in support of the petition for rehearing en banc. The brief
argues that a rehearing is necessary because the panel’s decision conflicts
with Carpenter as well as existing Fourth Amendment precedent on the “special
needs” doctrine.
Amici argue that the panel’s decision that the AIR program does not
contravene Carpenter stems from the erroneous conclusion that the program cannot
capture identifying characteristics of people or automobiles. In fact, as the
brief presents, it is possible to “reidentify” or “deanonymize” individuals from
the data collected by the AIR program. Furthermore, when coupling the aerial
surveillance footage with existing datasets owned by the Baltimore Police
Department, such as CCTV cameras and automated license plate readers, individual
identification is almost guaranteed. The contract for the AIR program explicitly
plans for integration with other surveillance datasets. The brief explains how,
through its permeating, expansive, and continuous surveillance, the AIR program
dramatically reduces the degree of privacy afforded to the residents of
Baltimore. Surveillance technologies that collect detailed records about
people’s movements, like the AIR program, infringe on individuals’ reasonable
expectations of privacy under Carpenter.
The brief next lays out how the panel’s decision conflicts with a second Fourth
Amendment principle: existing precedent on the “special needs” doctrine and
other suspicionless searches. The panel’s alternative holding that the AIR
program satisfies Fourth Amendment scrutiny under “the balancing test used for
programmatic searches” is mistaken. Under the Fourth Amendment, no “balancing
test” exists for programmatic searches undertaken for ordinary law enforcement
purposes, like criminal investigations or prosecutions. Supreme
Court precedent is clear that “warrantless searches are typically unreasonable
where a search is undertaken by law enforcement officials to discover evidence
of criminal wrongdoing.” The AIR program is a law enforcement investigative and
crime-control tool. Thus, the “special needs” doctrine does not apply. The
application of the “special needs” exception to justify a program of
warrantless, suspicionless searches through Baltimore’s AIR program is a
dramatic and dangerous expansion of this principle.
Lastly, amici argue that in addition to contradicting these two Fourth Amendment
principles, this case exemplifies the disparate burden of government
surveillance borne by communities of color. Intrusive aerial surveillance
programs are often deployed in cities with large communities of color, such as
Compton, California; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and Dayton, Ohio. The AIR
program also raises serious First Amendment concerns due to its capacity to
chill free speech and assembly in surveilled spaces. For all of these reasons,
amici maintain that the Court should rehear the case en banc.
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