SAN ANTONIO, TX – October 1, 2026 (STL.News) A federal jury found Bexar County, Texas, liable for violating a driver’s Fourth Amendment rights during a 2022 traffic stop that grew out of a law-enforcement surveillance system that could track motorists through license-plate data and identify travel patterns considered suspicious.
The eight-member federal jury found that Bexar County violated the constitutional rights of Houston-area resident Alek Schott by stopping him without sufficient legal justification, improperly extending his detention and searching his pickup truck without lawful cause. The jury awarded Schott $76 — the amount he requested, representing $1 for each minute he was detained.
The verdict followed a weeklong trial in federal court in San Antonio and approximately three hours of jury deliberations, according to the Houston Chronicle.
The case, Schott v. Babb et al., was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas under the federal civil rights statute, 42 U.S.C. § 1983. Schott originally sued Bexar County and sheriff’s personnel following the March 2022 encounter.
The verdict does not establish that automatic license-plate readers themselves are categorically unconstitutional. Instead, the jury found constitutional violations in how Bexar County applied its traffic-interdiction practices to Schott — including the initial stop, the continued detention, and the vehicle search.
The distinction matters as automated license-plate readers and other surveillance technologies become increasingly common among federal, state, and local law-enforcement agencies.
Business trip attracts law-enforcement attention
The encounter began with what court records describe as an ordinary business trip.
Schott worked for his family’s company, RMS Controls, which sells equipment used in the oil, gas, and pipeline industries. His job involved traveling to customer sites, including locations in South Texas.
On March 16, 2022, Schott met a businesswoman at a hotel in Pearsall, Texas. They traveled to a Chesapeake Energy site near Carrizo Springs for a product demonstration before Schott returned the woman to the hotel and began driving toward Houston.
Court records show that law-enforcement intelligence personnel noticed Schott’s travel.
A source associated with what court documents identify as the Laredo Fusion Center communicated information about Schott to the Bexar County Sheriff’s Office Criminal Interdiction Unit. His trip had been characterized as a “one-day turnaround,” a travel pattern interdiction officers sometimes associate with drug or human trafficking.
The information also indicated that Schott had traveled with a female passenger and later dropped her off at a hotel.
None of those circumstances, however, meant that Schott had committed a crime.
The intelligence eventually reached Bexar County Deputy Joel Babb through a WhatsApp group known as the “Northwest Highway Group.” According to court records, Babb understood the information came from a person he knew as “Kiki,” who was associated with law-enforcement intelligence operations.
Babb then positioned himself to encounter Schott’s Ford F-250.
Disputed traffic violation leads to stop
Babb maintained that he observed Schott’s truck touch or cross a highway lane marking. During the traffic stop, Babb told Schott that he had been drifting over the fog line.
Schott disputed that account.
His own dashboard camera was operating as he approached the deputy, and the traffic violation became a central issue in the subsequent litigation.
After the trial, the Houston Chronicle reported that Schott’s camera showed he had not drifted onto the shoulder. The jury ultimately found the stop unconstitutional.
What followed turned a purported traffic stop into a much longer investigation.
Babb asked Schott about weapons and directed him out of the truck. Schott was patted down and eventually placed in the front of the deputy’s patrol vehicle while Babb questioned him about his travels.
Court records show that Babb was a member of the Bexar County Sheriff’s Office Criminal Interdiction Unit, created in late 2021 or early 2022. The unit sought to identify and intercept vehicles suspected of involvement in narcotics, firearms, or human trafficking.
A federal magistrate judge reviewing the case before trial described testimony that the unit practiced what its members called “proactive policing.” That strategy involved stopping suspected traffickers for traffic violations and using the resulting encounters, when possible, to obtain access to and search their vehicles.
Schott eventually declined a request to search his truck.
Deputies then brought a drug-detection dog to the vehicle.
The dog’s handler reported an alert, and deputies searched the truck. Deputies found no contraband that resulted in criminal charges, and Schott was eventually released.
The entire detention lasted approximately 76 minutes.
Federal lawsuit targets county policy
Schott filed his federal lawsuit in June 2023.
His case ultimately became about more than whether a single deputy conducted an unconstitutional traffic stop.
To establish municipal liability against Bexar County, Schott had to show that an official policy or established custom attributable to the county caused the constitutional violations.
That issue survived a major pretrial challenge.
In an April 29, 2026, amended report and recommendation, U.S. Magistrate Judge Richard B. Farrer concluded that Bexar County’s motion for summary judgment should be denied. U.S. District Judge Orlando L. Garcia subsequently adopted the recommendation and denied the county’s motion, clearing the way for the dispute to proceed toward trial.
Evidence examined during the litigation provided a rare public look into how intelligence generated from surveillance technology can move between agencies before resulting in a traffic stop.
The jury ultimately found Bexar County liable.
According to the Houston Chronicle, jurors concluded that the county violated Schott’s Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures through three components of the encounter: stopping him without lawful cause, improperly prolonging the detention, and searching his truck without lawful cause.
The jury awarded Schott exactly what he requested: $76.
The relatively small award was intentional. Schott and his attorneys have said the lawsuit aimed to establish accountability rather than obtain a large monetary judgment.
License-plate surveillance raises broader questions
The case arrives amid growing scrutiny of automated license-plate-reader networks and predictive law-enforcement systems.
Automatic license-plate readers can photograph plates and record information such as the time and location at which a vehicle passes a camera. When law enforcement combines information from numerous cameras, it can potentially reconstruct portions of a vehicle’s travel history.
An Associated Press investigation published in 2025 found that U.S. Border Patrol had developed a surveillance network capable of monitoring large numbers of vehicles and identifying travel patterns the government considered potentially connected to illegal activity.
According to the AP, the system can flag vehicles based on such factors as their origins, destinations, and routes. Law enforcement can then share the information with other agencies.
The AP investigation specifically examined Schott’s case and reported that federal agents had observed his overnight trip from the Houston area to South Texas and back. According to court records reviewed by the AP, Border Patrol asked local law enforcement to stop Schott.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection told the AP that its use of license-plate-reader technology is subject to federal law, constitutional protections and a multilayered policy framework. The agency has maintained that surveillance technology helps authorities identify threats and disrupt criminal networks.
The Schott verdict therefore should not be interpreted as a blanket judicial prohibition on license-plate readers.
Rather, it demonstrates the constitutional problems that can arise when surveillance-generated intelligence leads authorities to target a particular motorist and the resulting stop, detention, or search lacks the legal justification required by the Fourth Amendment.
Surveillance and the Fourth Amendment
The Fourth Amendment protects people against unreasonable searches and seizures.
Police generally may conduct a traffic stop when they have the legally required basis to believe a traffic violation occurred. Officers can also investigate other suspected crimes when the circumstances provide the level of individualized suspicion required by law.
But a lawful traffic stop cannot automatically become an unlimited criminal investigation.
Courts have repeatedly confronted questions about when a traffic stop becomes unlawfully prolonged and when police have sufficient probable cause to search a vehicle.
The growth of large-scale surveillance adds another dimension.
License-plate information observed on public roads has generally been treated differently from information obtained through a search of a private home or electronic device. However, civil-liberties advocates and legal scholars have increasingly questioned whether enormous databases that can reconstruct people’s movements over extended periods raise different constitutional concerns than a police officer simply observing a license plate on a public street.
Schott’s case did not resolve all of those broader questions.
Instead, the jury evaluated what Bexar County did after surveillance intelligence focused attention on Schott.
County considering further legal action
The verdict may not be the final development in the litigation.
Charles Frigerio, an attorney representing Bexar County, told ABC13 that the county intends to file post-trial motions once the court enters final judgment and will explore an appeal. The Houston Chronicle similarly reported that the county intends to exercise appellate options.
Schott is represented by the Institute for Justice, a public-interest law firm that litigates constitutional and civil-liberties cases.
The organization says it intends to ask Judge Garcia for an injunction restricting Bexar County from using baseless traffic stops to conduct warrantless vehicle searches. That request is separate from the jury’s damages verdict and remains a matter for the court.
The Institute for Justice has characterized the case as a challenge to a broader surveillance-driven traffic-interdiction system. That description reflects the plaintiff’s legal position and should be distinguished from the jury’s narrower factual findings.
The county, meanwhile, retains its right to challenge the verdict through post-trial proceedings and the appellate process.
Verdict could resonate beyond Texas
The case highlights an increasingly important question for American law enforcement: What happens when modern surveillance technology identifies a person as suspicious before police have evidence that the individual actually committed a crime?
Automated systems can process information on a scale impossible for individual officers. License-plate readers can document vehicle movements, databases can connect observations from different locations, and analytical systems can search those records for patterns.
Those capabilities can help investigators search for stolen vehicles, fugitives, or people connected to serious crimes.
But Schott’s case illustrates the constitutional boundary that remains after technology generates a lead.
A surveillance alert does not eliminate Fourth Amendment protections.
In Schott’s case, a routine work trip through South Texas generated law-enforcement attention. Local deputies received intelligence about his movements. A traffic stop followed. The encounter expanded into questioning, a drug-dog sniff and a search of his pickup.
Nothing resulting in criminal charges was found.
More than four years later, a federal jury concluded that Bexar County crossed constitutional lines in stopping, detaining, and searching him.
For those 76 minutes on the side of Interstate 35, Schott asked the jury for $76.
The jury gave him every dollar he requested.
Sources: U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas court records in Schott v. Babb et al., Case No. 5:23-cv-00706; federal magistrate judge’s April 29, 2026 amended report and recommendation; Houston Chronicle; Texas Public Radio; ABC13 Houston; Associated Press; Institute for Justice.
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