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SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
_________________
No. 18–556
_________________
KANSAS, PETITIONER
v. CHARLES
GLOVER
on writ of certiorari to the supreme court of
kansas
[April 6, 2020]
Justice Thomas delivered the opinion of the
Court.
This case presents the question whether a police
officer violates the Fourth Amendment by initiating an
investigative traffic stop after running a vehicle’s license plate
and learning that the registered owner has a revoked driver’s
license. We hold that when the officer lacks information negating
an inference that the owner is the driver of the vehicle, the stop
is reasonable.
I
Kansas charged respondent Charles Glover, Jr.,
with driving as a habitual violator after a traffic stop revealed
that he was driving with a revoked license. See Kan. Stat. Ann.
§8–285(a)(3) (2001). Glover filed a motion to suppress all evidence
seized during the stop, claiming that the officer lacked reasonable
suspicion. Neither Glover nor the police officer testified at the
suppression hearing. Instead, the parties stipulated to the
following facts:
“1. Deputy Mark Mehrer is a certified law
enforcement officer employed by the Douglas County Kansas
Sheriff ’s Office.
2. On April 28, 2016, Deputy Mehrer was on
routine patrol in Douglas County when he observed a 1995 Chevrolet
1500 pickup truck with Kansas plate 295ATJ.
3. Deputy Mehrer ran Kansas plate 295ATJ
through the Kansas Department of Revenue’s file service. The
registration came back to a 1995 Chevrolet 1500 pickup truck.
4. Kansas Department of Revenue files indicated
the truck was registered to Charles Glover Jr. The files also
indicated that Mr. Glover had a revoked driver’s license in the
State of Kansas.
5. Deputy Mehrer assumed the registered owner
of the truck was also the driver, Charles Glover Jr.
6. Deputy Mehrer 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the truck was revoked, Deputy Mehrer initiated a traffic stop.
7. The driver of the truck was identified as the
defendant, Charles Glover Jr.” App. to Pet. for Cert. 60–61.
The District Court granted Glover’s motion to
suppress. The Court of Appeals reversed, holding that “it was
reasonable for [Deputy] Mehrer to infer that the driver was the
owner of the vehicle” because “there were specific and articulable
facts from which the officer’s common-sense inference gave rise to
a reasonable suspicion.” 54 Kan. App. 2d 377, 385, 400 P.3d 182,
188 (2017).
The Kansas Supreme Court reversed. According to
the court, Deputy Mehrer did not have reasonable suspicion because
his inference that Glover was behind the wheel amounted to “only a
hunch” that Glover was engaging in criminal activity. 308 Kan. 590,
591, 422 P.3d 64, 66 (2018). The court further explained that
Deputy Mehrer’s “hunch” involved “applying and stacking unstated
assumptions that are unreasonable without further factual basis,”
namely, that “the registered owner was likely the primary driver of
the vehicle” and that “the owner will likely disregard the
suspension or revocation order and continue to drive.”
Id.,
at 595–597, 422 P. 3d, at 68–70. We granted Kansas’ petition
for a writ of certiorari, 587 U. S. ___ (2019), and now
reverse.
II
Under this Court’s precedents, the Fourth
Amendment permits an officer to initiate a brief investigative
traffic stop when he has “a particularized and objective basis for
suspecting the particular person stopped of criminal activity.”
United States v.
Cortez,
449
U.S. 411, 417–418 (1981); see also
Terry v.
Ohio,
392 U.S.
1, 21–22 (1968). “Although a mere ‘hunch’ does not create
reasonable suspicion, the level of suspicion the standard requires
is considerably less than proof of wrongdoing by a preponderance of
the evidence, and obviously less than is necessary for probable
cause.”
Prado Navarette v.
California,
572 U.S.
393, 397 (2014) (quotation altered);
United States v.
Sokolow,
490 U.S.
1, 7 (1989).
Because it is a “less demanding” standard,
“reasonable suspicion can be established with information that is
different in quantity or content than that required to establish
probable cause.”
Alabama v.
White,
496 U.S.
325, 330 (1990). The standard “depends on the factual and
practical considerations of everyday life on which
reasonable
and prudent men, not legal technicians, act.”
Navarette,
supra, at 402 (quoting
Ornelas v.
United
States,
517 U.S.
690, 695 (1996) (emphasis added; internal quotation marks
omitted)). Courts “cannot reasonably demand scientific certainty
. . . where none exists.”
Illinois v.
Wardlow,
528 U.S.
119, 125 (2000). Rather, they must permit officers to make
“commonsense judgments and inferences about human behavior.”
Ibid.; see also
Navarette,
supra, at 403
(noting that an officer “ ‘need not rule out the possibility
of innocent conduct’ ”).
III
We have previously recognized that States have
a “vital interest in ensuring that only those qualified to do so
are permitted to operate motor vehicles [and] that licensing,
registration, and vehicle inspection requirements are being
observed.”
Delaware v.
Prouse,
440 U.S.
648, 658 (1979). With this in mind, we turn to whether the
facts known to Deputy Mehrer at the time of the stop gave rise to
reason- able suspicion. We conclude that they did.
Before initiating the stop, Deputy Mehrer
observed an individual operating a 1995 Chevrolet 1500 pickup truck
with Kansas plate 295ATJ. He also knew that the registered owner of
the truck had a revoked license and that the model of the truck
matched the observed vehicle. From these three facts, Deputy Mehrer
drew the commonsense inference that Glover was likely the driver of
the vehicle, which provided more than reasonable suspicion to
initiate the stop.
The fact that the registered owner of a vehicle
is not always the driver of the vehicle does not negate the reason-
ableness of Deputy Mehrer’s inference. Such is the case with all
reasonable inferences. The reasonable suspicion inquiry “falls
considerably short” of 51% accuracy, see
United States v.
Arvizu,
534 U.S.
266, 274 (2002), for, as we have explained, “[t]o be reasonable
is not to be perfect,”
Heien v.
North Carolina,
574 U.S.
54, 60 (2014).
Glover’s revoked license does not render Deputy
Mehrer’s inference unreasonable either. Empirical studies
demonstrate what common experience readily reveals: Drivers with
revoked licenses frequently continue to drive and therefore to pose
safety risks to other motorists and pedestrians. See,
e.g.,
2 T. Neuman et al., National Coop. Hwy. Research Program
Report 500: A Guide for Addressing Collisions Involving Unlicensed
Drivers and Drivers With Suspended or Revoked Licenses,
p. III–1 (2003) (noting that 75% of drivers with suspended or
revoked licenses continue to drive); National Hwy. and Traffic
Safety Admin., Research Note: Driver License Compliance Status in
Fatal Crashes 2 (Oct. 2014) (noting that approximately 19% of motor
vehicle fatalities from 2008–2012 “involved drivers with invalid
licenses”).
Although common sense suffices to justify this
inference, Kansas law reinforces that it is reasonable to infer
that an individual with a revoked license may continue driving. The
State’s license-revocation scheme covers drivers who have already
demonstrated a disregard for the law or are categorically unfit to
drive. The Division of Vehicles of the Kansas Department of Revenue
(Division) “shall” revoke a driver’s license upon certain
convictions for involuntary manslaughter, vehicular homicide,
battery, reckless driving, fleeing or attempting to elude a police
officer, or conviction of a felony in which a motor vehicle is
used. Kan. Stat. Ann. §§8–254(a), 8–252. Reckless driving is
defined as “driv[ing] any vehicle in willful or wanton disregard
for the safety of persons or property.” §8–1566(a). The Division
also has discretion to revoke a license if a driver “[h]as been
convicted with such frequency of serious offenses against traffic
regulations governing the movement of vehicles as to indicate a
disrespect for traffic laws and a disregard for the safety of other
persons on the highways,” “has been convicted of three or more
moving traffic violations committed on separate occasions within a
12-month period,” “is incompetent to drive a motor vehicle,” or
“has been convicted of a moving traffic violation, committed at a
time when the person’s driving privileges were restricted,
suspended[,] or revoked.” §§8–255(a)(1)–(4). Other reasons include
violating license restrictions, §8–245(c), being under house
arrest, §21–6609(c), and being a habitual violator, §8–286, which
Kansas defines as a resident or nonresident who has been convicted
three or more times within the past five years of certain
enumerated driving offenses, §8–285. The concerns motivating the
State’s various grounds for revocation lend further credence to the
inference that a registered owner with a revoked Kansas driver’s
license might be the one driving the vehicle.
IV
Glover and the dissent respond with two
arguments as to why Deputy Mehrer lacked reasonable suspicion.
Neither is persuasive.
A
First, Glover and the dissent argue that
Deputy Mehrer’s inference was unreasonable because it was not
grounded in his law enforcement training or experience. Nothing in
our Fourth Amendment precedent supports the notion that, in
determining whether reasonable suspicion exists, an officer can
draw inferences based on knowledge gained only through law
enforcement training and experience. We have repeatedly recognized
the opposite. In
Navarette, we noted a number of
behaviors—including driving in the median, crossing the center line
on a highway, and swerving—that as a matter of common sense provide
“sound indicia of drunk driving.” 572 U. S., at 402. In
Wardlow, we made the unremarkable observation that
“[h]eadlong flight—wherever it occurs—is the consummate act of
evasion” and therefore could factor into a police officer’s
reasonable suspicion determination. 528 U. S., at 124. And in
Sokolow, we recognized that the defendant’s method of
payment for an airplane ticket contributed to the agents’
reasonable suspicion of drug trafficking because we “fe[lt]
confident” that “[m]ost business travelers . . . purchase
airline tickets by credit card or check” rather than cash. 490
U. S., at 8–9. So too here. The inference that the driver of a
car is its registered owner does not require any specialized
training; rather, it is a reasonable inference made by ordinary
people on a daily basis.
The dissent reads our cases differently,
contending that they permit an officer to use only the common sense
derived from his “experiences in law enforcement.”
Post, at
5 (opinion of Sotomayor, J.). Such a standard defies the “common
sense” understanding of common sense,
i.e., information that
is accessible to people generally, not just some specialized subset
of society. More importantly, this standard appears nowhere in our
precedent. In fact, we have stated that reasonable suspicion is an
“abstract” concept that cannot be reduced to “a neat set of legal
rules,”
Arvizu, 534 U. S., at 274 (internal quotation
marks omitted), and we have repeatedly rejected courts’ efforts to
impose a rigid structure on the concept of reasonableness,
ibid.;
Sokolow, 490 U. S., at 7–8. This is
precisely what the dissent’s rule would do by insisting that
officers must be treated as bifurcated persons, completely
precluded from drawing factual inferences based on the commonly
held knowledge they have acquired in their everyday lives.
The dissent’s rule would also impose on police
the burden of pointing to specific training materials or field
experiences justifying reasonable suspicion for the myriad
infractions in municipal criminal codes. And by removing common
sense as a source of evidence, the dissent would considerably
narrow the daylight between the showing required for probable cause
and the “less stringent” showing required for reasonable suspicion.
Prouse, 440 U. S., at 654; see
White, 496
U. S., at 330. Finally, it would impermissibly tie a traffic
stop’s validity to the officer’s length of service. See
Devenpeck v.
Alford,
543 U.S.
146, 154 (2004). Such requirements are inconsistent with our
Fourth Amendment jurisprudence, and we decline to adopt them
here.
In reaching this conclusion, we in no way
minimize the significant role that specialized training and
experience routinely play in law enforcement investigations. See,
e.g.,
Arvizu, 534 U. S., at 273–274. We simply
hold that such experience is not
required in every
instance.
B
Glover and the dissent also contend that
adopting Kansas’ view would eviscerate the need for officers to
base reasonable suspicion on “specific and articulable facts”
particularized to the individual, see
Terry, 392 U. S.,
at 21, because police could instead rely exclusively on
probabilities. Their argument carries little force.
As an initial matter, we have previously stated
that officers, like jurors, may rely on probabilities in the
reasonable suspicion context. See
Sokolow, 490 U. S.,
at 8–9;
Cortez, 449 U. S., at 418. Moreover, as
explained above, Deputy Mehrer did not rely exclusively on
probabilities. He knew that the license plate was linked to a truck
matching the observed vehicle and that the registered owner of the
vehicle had a revoked license. Based on these minimal facts, he
used common sense to form a reasonable suspicion that a specific
individual was potentially engaged in specific criminal
activity—driving with a revoked license. Traffic stops of this
nature do not delegate to officers “broad and unlimited discretion”
to stop drivers at random.
United States v.
Brignoni-Ponce,
422 U.S.
873, 882 (1975). Nor do they allow officers to stop drivers
whose conduct is no different from any other driver’s. See
Brown v.
Texas,
443 U.S.
47, 52 (1979). Accordingly, combining database information and
commonsense judgments in this context is fully consonant with this
Court’s Fourth Amendment precedents.[
1]
V
This Court’s precedents have repeatedly
affirmed that “ ‘the ultimate touchstone of the Fourth
Amendment is “reasonableness.” ’ ”
Heien, 574
U. S., at 60 (quoting
Riley v.
California,
573 U.S.
373, 381 (2014)). Under the totality of the circumstances of
this case, Deputy Mehrer drew an entirely reasonable inference that
Glover was driving while his license was revoked.
We emphasize the narrow scope of our holding.
Like all seizures, “[t]he officer’s action must be ‘justified at
its inception.’ ”
Hiibel v.
Sixth Judicial Dist.
Court of Nev.,
Humboldt Cty.,
542
U.S. 177, 185 (2004) (quoting
United States v.
Sharpe,
470 U.S.
675, 682 (1985)). “The standard takes into account the totality
of the circumstances—the whole picture.”
Navarette, 572
U. S., at 397 (internal quotation marks omitted). As a result,
the presence of additional facts might dispel reasonable suspicion.
See
Terry,
supra, at 28. For example, if an officer
knows that the registered owner of the vehicle is in his
mid-sixties but observes that the driver is in her mid-twenties,
then the totality of the circumstances would not “raise a suspicion
that the particular individual being stopped is engaged in
wrongdoing.”
Cortez, 449 U. S., at 418;
Ornelas,
517 U. S., at 696 (“ ‘[e]ach case is to be decided on its
own facts and circumstances’ ” (quoting
Ker v.
California,
374 U.S.
23, 33 (1963))). Here, Deputy Mehrer possessed no exculpatory
information—let alone sufficient information to rebut the
reasonable inference that Glover was driving his own truck—and thus
the stop was justified.[
2]
* * *
For the foregoing reasons, we reverse the
judgment of the Kansas Supreme Court, and we remand the case for
further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.