Summary
Gibbs Mura’s case page for the amended class action complaint filed April 3, 2026 in San Francisco Superior Court (original filing: February 26, 2026) against Flock Safety. With co-counsel Milberg PLLC, the firm alleges Flock used ALPRs to track Californians’ daily movements and illegally shared license plate, location, and vehicle data with out-of-state law enforcement and federal immigration authorities. The complaint is grounded in California state privacy law — California Civil Code § 1798.90.55(b), § 1798.90.51, § 1798.90.52, and SB 54 — not in federal constitutional doctrine. The statutory damages floor is $2,500 per violation; San Francisco PD cameras alone were accessed by federal agencies more than 1.6 million times. Los Altos cameras were accessed by out-of-state agencies more than one million times. Mountain View shut down its entire Flock network. The El Cajon case (California AG Rob Bonta, October 2025) is named as the parallel state-AG action alleging the same architecture.
Key Points
- Amended complaint filed April 3, 2026; original filed February 26, 2026; venue: San Francisco Superior Court
- Statutory damages floor: $2,500 per violation under California Civil Code § 1798.90.54 — plus actual damages, punitive damages for willful violations, attorney’s fees, injunctive relief
- Three-year statute of limitations from violation date
- Statutory claims:
- California Civil Code § 1798.90.55(b) — prohibits sharing ALPR data with non-California public agencies or federal entities
- California Civil Code § 1798.90.51(a) — reasonable security procedures for ALPR information
- California Civil Code §§ 1798.90.51(b) and 1798.90.52(b) — privacy policies aligned with civil liberties protections
- SB 54 — California sanctuary state law prohibiting immigration enforcement data sharing
- Documented violations:
- San Francisco PD: 1.6 million+ federal-agency accesses
- Los Altos: 1 million+ out-of-state agency accesses
- Mountain View: shut down entire Flock network citing unauthorized federal access concerns
- El Cajon: California AG Rob Bonta filed separate state lawsuit October 2025
- Geographic scope: 200+ California municipal police and sheriff departments use Flock cameras — Oakland, San Francisco, Berkeley, Mountain View, Los Gatos, El Cajon named
- Lead attorneys: David Berger (Partner — Data Breach and Privacy Litigation), Kate Walford (Class Action and Data Privacy), Jennifer Sun (Technology Company Privacy Litigation), Eileen Epstein Carney (Corporate Misconduct)
- No federal constitutional claims asserted — the complaint is grounded exclusively in California state law
Newsletter Angles
- The damages math is the story. $2,500 × 1.6 million SFPD accesses = $4 billion statutory exposure on one department’s cameras alone. Add Los Altos (1M+ accesses) and the 198 other California Flock departments and the per-state liability is unprecedented for an ALPR vendor. The remedy is real; its constitutional reach is not.
- The complaint is grounded in state law, not the Fourth Amendment. This is the load-bearing point for the The Bill of Rights Ends at the Contractor’s Door argument: real remedies for vendor surveillance exist at the state-statutory layer (California Civil Code § 1798.90.55(b), SB 54) but not at the federal constitutional layer. No federal court has held that a privately-operated ALPR network must comply with the Fourth Amendment limits that would apply to government doing the same collection directly.
- El Cajon as the state-AG parallel track. Bonta’s October 2025 case against El Cajon is the state-law version of “the AG can sue when residents can also sue” — meaning California has two simultaneous enforcement tracks operating against the same statutes against the same vendor architecture. Useful framing for the “state remedies are real; federal doctrine isn’t” thesis.
- The 200+ California-department footprint is the structural scale claim. Every one of those departments is independently subject to the §1798.90.55(b) prohibition, meaning the class is potentially much larger than the SFPD/Los Altos/Mountain View cases on the docket.
Entities Mentioned
- Flock Safety — defendant
- Gibbs Mura — plaintiff’s counsel (Oakland); David Berger is the public face
- Milberg PLLC — co-counsel
- San Francisco Police Department — primary documented violation site (1.6M federal accesses)
- Los Altos Police Department — 1M+ out-of-state accesses
- Mountain View Police Department — shut down Flock network
- El Cajon Police Department — subject of separate California AG suit
- Rob Bonta — California Attorney General; filed October 2025 El Cajon case
- David Berger — Gibbs Mura partner; lead public attorney
- Kate Walford — Gibbs Mura attorney; class action and data privacy
- Jennifer Sun — Gibbs Mura attorney; technology company privacy litigation
- Eileen Epstein Carney — Gibbs Mura attorney; corporate misconduct
Concepts Mentioned
- National Lookup — implied as the architectural mechanism enabling the cross-state queries the complaint alleges
- Flock Safety Surveillance Network — the 200+ California-department footprint is the network’s California layer
- Automated License Plate Recognition / ALPR
- Sanctuary City Policy — SB 54 is California’s state sanctuary statute and one of the asserted claims
- Vendor-State Governance — state-statutory regime as the available enforcement layer absent a federal constitutional doctrine
- Class Action — procedural vehicle (deferred concept; first substantive appearance in vendor-surveillance context)
Quotes
The case page itself is the law firm’s announcement; it does not include direct quotes from the complaint or from the partners. Quotes from Berger appear in the SFist — Flock lawsuit SFPD 1.6 million accesses source, filed under the same docket.
Notes
Primary case page maintained by plaintiff’s counsel; not an objective legal analysis but a definitive source for the procedural posture (filing dates, venue, statutory grounds, named statutes, named lead attorneys) since the firm is publishing the case it filed. Confirms what SFist — Flock lawsuit SFPD 1.6 million accesses left ambiguous — the case is filed in San Francisco Superior Court, not federal court, and the asserted grounds are state-statutory only. Cited as a primary source in The Bill of Rights Ends at the Contractor’s Door (TCN draft, May 2026). Pairs with Bend Source — Bend PD Flock 279 Federal Queries June 2025 and CBS LA — Ventura County Flock 364k Unauthorized Access 2026 as the legal-remedy layer responding to the same architectural failure those two sources document operationally.