Kansas v. Glover
Issues
Under the Fourth Amendment, can a police officer pull over a vehicle merely because its registered owner has a suspended driver’s license, even if the officer is unsure whether that owner is driving?
This case asks whether a police officer has reasonable suspicion to pull over a vehicle if the officer knows only that the vehicle’s registered owner has a suspended driver’s license, but the officer is unsure whether the registered owner is driving the vehicle. Under the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution, police officers may initiate brief stops of drivers who they reasonably suspect are committing a crime. In the present case, police deputy Mark Mehrer observed a moving vehicle and determined that the vehicle belonged to Charles Glover, who had a suspended license. Mehrer pulled over Glover’s vehicle after assuming that Glover was driving and thus violating the law. The State of Kansas argues that Mehrer had reasonable suspicion to stop Glover, because the Fourth Amendment allowed him to make the commonsense assumption that the driver of a vehicle owns that vehicle. Glover counters that the stop violated his Fourth Amendment right against illegal searches and seizures, because without that assumption, Mehrer had no reason to stop his vehicle. The outcome of this case has implications for drivers’ privacy, public safety, and the amount of discretion police officers possess in deciding when to stop a vehicle.
Questions as Framed for the Court by the Parties
Whether, for purposes of an investigative stop under the Fourth Amendment, it is reasonable for an officer to suspect that the registered owner of a vehicle is the one driving the vehicle absent any information to the contrary.
On April 28, 2016, Deputy Mark Mehrer was on patrol when he saw a 1995 Chevrolet pickup truck drive by. State v. Glover at 66–67. Deputy Mehrer ran a check on the truck’s license plate number and discovered that Charles Glover, Jr., the registered owner of the vehicle, did not have a valid driver’s license. Id. at 66. Deputy Mehrer neither observed any traffic violations, nor tried to confirm whether Glover was driving the truck.
Edited by
Additional Resources
- Damon Root: The Supreme Court’s Next Big Fourth Amendment Casehttps://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/05/us/politics/supreme-court-nonunanimous-juries.html, Reason (Sep. 10, 2019).
- Debra Cassens Weiss: Supreme Court to Decide Whether Registration Check Justified Traffic Stop, ABA Journal (Apr. 2, 2019).
- Nick Sibilla: Supreme Court Traffic Stop Case Could Drastically Limit Drivers’ Fourth Amendment Rights, Forbes (Sept. 13, 2019).