Leaders of Beautiful Struggle v. Baltimore Police Department, 979 F.3d 219

Baltimore Police Department (BPD) implemented the Aerial Investigative Research (AIR) pilot with Persistent Surveillance Systems (PSS) to help solve violent crimes amid high homicide rates.
AIR flies three planes by day (weather permitting), covering ~90% of the city; imagery renders people as pixelated dots and cannot by itself show facial/features or indoor movements.
Analysts (PSS and BPD) access imagery only after a reported violent crime in a location; they may tag dots and reconstruct hours of public movement; data are retained 45 days unless used in prosecution.
Plaintiffs sued under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 alleging Fourth and First Amendment violations and sought a preliminary injunction; the district court denied relief.
The Fourth Circuit (Wilkinson) affirmed the denial, holding plaintiffs were likely photographed (standing) but unlikely to prevail on the merits; Chief Judge Gregory dissented, arguing Carpenter controls and AIR is unconstitutional dragnet surveillance.

Issue	Plaintiff's Argument	Defendant's Argument	Held
Standing	Plaintiffs will be photographed by AIR and thus suffer concrete injury.	Defendants: any alleged injury is speculative and contingent.	Standing exists; likely to be photographed.
Fourth Amendment—reasonable expectation of privacy	AIR creates retrospective, citywide tracking that invades the privacy of public movements (Carpenter).	AIR is limited: daytime-only, pixelated dots, cannot track indoors or identify characteristics; akin to permissible short-term/public surveillance (Knotts/Ciraolo).	Plaintiffs unlikely to succeed; no reasonable expectation of privacy in AIR’s limited short-term public-movement surveillance.
Programmatic/suspicionless-search balancing (special-needs)	AIR is a dragnet targeting individuals and therefore cannot be justified as a suspicionless program.	AIR serves an important public-safety need; built-in limits and constrained access minimize privacy burdens.	Balancing favors the government: AIR is a permissible programmatic tool under the reasonableness balancing test.
First Amendment—associational chill & preliminary injunction factors	AIR will chill association and community organizing; irreparable harm warrants injunction.	Plaintiffs cannot show the program meaningfully deters public association; public interest and equities favor pilot continuation.	First Amendment claim unlikely to succeed; district court did not abuse discretion in denying preliminary injunction.

Carpenter v. United States, 138 S. Ct. 2206 (2018) (CSLI long-term location tracking implicates Fourth Amendment privacy)
United States v. Jones, 565 U.S. 400 (2012) (long-term GPS monitoring raises privacy concerns)
United States v. Knotts, 460 U.S. 276 (1983) (limited expectation of privacy in public movements)
California v. Ciraolo, 476 U.S. 207 (1986) (aerial observation within navigable airspace may not be a search)
Dow Chemical Co. v. United States, 476 U.S. 227 (1986) (repeated aerial photography did not invade reasonable expectation of privacy)
Florida v. Riley, 488 U.S. 445 (1989) (helicopter observation did not constitute search under certain conditions)
Kyllo v. United States, 533 U.S. 27 (2001) (technology that infers private details can constitute a search)
Winter v. Natural Res. Def. Council, 555 U.S. 7 (2008) (extraordinary nature and four-factor test for preliminary injunctions)
Michigan Dep’t of State Police v. Sitz, 496 U.S. 444 (1990) (balancing test upholding checkpoint programmatic searches)
Wikimedia Found. v. Nat’l Sec. Agency, 857 F.3d 193 (4th Cir. 2017) (standing where government collected communications)