Sponsors (2)
The bill strengthens motorists' location-privacy protections and uses federal funding leverage to push states toward ALPR privacy laws, at the cost of risking reduced highway funding for noncompliant states and potential limits on some legitimate public-safety and traffic-management uses, plus compliance costs for smaller states.
Motorists in states that adopt qualifying restrictions will have stronger limits on mass vehicle tracking, protecting their location privacy from broad ALPR deployments.
State governments are given a clear fiscal incentive—conditioning 10% of certain federal 104(b) highway apportionments—encouraging them to enact privacy protections for ALPRs.
States that fail to pass qualifying ALPR privacy laws risk losing 10% of federal highway funds, which would reduce money available for road projects and maintenance.
Local governments and transportation agencies could see legitimate public-safety and traffic-management uses of ALPRs restricted, potentially hindering operations like incident response or traffic monitoring.
Smaller or cash-strapped states may face administrative and legislative costs to change laws to qualify for funds, creating financial tradeoffs and implementation burdens.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Conditions 10% of each state's annual section 104(b) highway funds on having a law that bans general ALPR use and limits ALPRs to toll enforcement and specified felony-related uses.
Official title: To amend title 23, United States Code, to withhold apportioned surface transportation funding from a State if such State fails to enact certain prohibitions relating to the use of automated license plate readers, and for other purposes.
Introduced September 14, 2026 by S. Raja Krishnamoorthi · Last progress September 14, 2026
Requires states to enact laws banning automated license plate readers (ALPRs) for general use and only allow them for toll enforcement and a short list of law-enforcement uses, or else lose 10% of a portion of federal highway funding. The funding penalty is applied by withholding 10% of each state's annual section 104(b) highway apportionment starting the first day of the fiscal year that begins after the second full fiscal year following enactment. The bill creates a new federal statutory requirement and adds a table-of-contents entry; it conditions part of federal highway formula funds on state adoption of limits on ALPR deployment and data retention/usage consistent with the permitted uses named in the law.