United States v. Porter

CourtCourt of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit
DecidedMarch 17, 2026
Docket25-60163
StatusPublished

This text of United States v. Porter (United States v. Porter) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
United States v. Porter, (5th Cir. 2026).

Opinion

Case: 25-60163 Document: 89-1 Page: 1 Date Filed: 03/17/2026

United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ____________ United States Court of Appeals Fifth Circuit

No. 25-60163 FILED March 17, 2026 ____________ Lyle W. Cayce United States of America, Clerk

Plaintiff—Appellee,

versus

Elijah Porter,

Defendant—Appellant. ______________________________

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi USDC No. 1:24-CR-11-1 ______________________________

Before Smith, Wiener, and Higginson, Circuit Judges. Jerry E. Smith, Circuit Judge: Elijah Porter was charged with possession of a machinegun in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(o). He challenges (1) the denial of his motion to suppress vehicle-location data obtained from a license plate reader (“LPR”) and a firearm obtained in a vehicle search and (2) the district court’s ruling that 18 U.S.C. § 922(o) is not unconstitutional. Because the use of an LPR did not constitute a search, no warrant was required; the stop was supported by reasonable suspicion, and the officer found the Glock and its machinegun conversion switch in plain view. Our circuit precedent forecloses Porter’s Second Amendment challenge. We affirm.

1 Case: 25-60163 Document: 89-1 Page: 2 Date Filed: 03/17/2026

No. 25-60163

I. Factual Background A. Evidentiary Hearing At the suppression hearing, the district court heard testimony from Charles Hoggard, a former officer for the Gautier Police Department. Video footage from Hoggard’s body camera was also presented.

1. Officer Hoggard’s Testimony While on patrol in January 2024, Hoggard received an alert on his phone that an LPR located at a specific intersection captured the license plate of a vehicle that was associated with criminal activity. He contacted dispatch and was told that the vehicle was “associated with” Elijah Porter, who had a warrant for aggravated assault. Hoggard conducted a computer check for the license plate, which revealed the vehicle was associated with “James Stewart” or “E.L. Porter.” He located the vehicle and conducted a traffic stop. After identifying Porter as the driver, Hoggard detained him and pat- ted him down. Hoggard observed a firearm protruding from under the driver’s seat. He was able to see the slide and barrel of the firearm, and a “little silver switch on the back of it,” which he “believed to be the switch of an automatic [G]lock.” Hoggard asked Porter if there were any weapons in the car “to see if he was going to be honest” and later retrieved the firearm during an inventory search of the vehicle, at which point he had not yet con- firmed that “the warrant was valid and true.” After Hoggard secured the firearm in his patrol car, the warrant was confirmed, and he took Porter to the police station. Hoggard stated that the LPR system allowed him to see when a vehi- cle had passed an LPR camera at a particular location, and he estimated there were no more than ten LPR cameras stationed across Gautier. He did not know how long the location data was stored within the LPR system, but he

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“could look and see how many times [a vehicle] passed within the general . . . time period.” Hoggard stated there had been other LPR “hits” on Porter’s vehicle earlier that day and the day before, but he was not able to locate the vehicle on those occasions because of heavy traffic. He acknowledged that he did not have a physical description of Porter when he initiated the traffic stop. Hoggard also noted that after seeing the firearm, he left it in Porter’s unlocked car, which was in a residential area, and did not immediately tell his colleague at the scene about the weapon.

2. Body Camera Footage The footage is consistent with Hoggard’s testimony. Hoggard patted Porter down next to the open driver’s side door and asked if he had any weap- ons, to which Porter said he did not. Hoggard then removed several personal items from Porter’s pockets and placed them on the driver’s seat. Just as Hoggard turned toward the driver’s seat, he asked Porter if there were any weapons in the car—Porter answered no. As Hoggard put Porter into his patrol unit, Hoggard removed an earbud from Porter’s ear and returned to Porter’s car to place it on the driver’s seat with his other belongings. Hoggard then locked Porter’s car and told his colleague that he had to confirm “the hit.” He returned to Porter’s vehicle, opened the center con- sole, and looked underneath the driver’s seat. Immediately thereafter, he tried to flag down his colleague. Hoggard then reached under the driver’s seat, pulled out a firearm, and said, “Oh, s--t.” The firearm was not visible on the video until this point. Hoggard motioned again for his colleague to come over and told him there’s “a f--king switch on that [G]lock.” Hoggard then said, “it was basically in plain view,” and “the barrel [was] sticking out from under the seat, so I saw it in plain view.”

3. Porter’s Arguments Porter asserts that the use of LPR cameras to detect his vehicle’s

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location constituted a search under the Fourth Amendment and that the vehicle-location data should be suppressed. He posits that he had a reasona- ble expectation of privacy in his location and movements that were captured by the LPR cameras and that a warrant was required for police to obtain such data from the LPR system. Porter also urges that the traffic stop was invalid because it was not supported by reasonable suspicion and that the firearm should be suppressed. Porter theorizes that even if the stop were lawful, the firearm was not in plain view and was not discovered during a lawful inventory search. And Porter claims that § 922(o) violates the Second Amendment, both facially and as applied to him. 1

B. District Court’s Rulings In a bench ruling, the district court determined that § 922(o) is not unconstitutional and denied Porter’s motion to dismiss the indictment. The court denied his motion to suppress the vehicle-location data, reasoning that “an individual traveling in an automobile on public thoroughfares has no rea- sonable expectation of privacy in their movements from one place to another” and “motorists do not have a privacy interest in their license plates,” since they are “constantly open to plain view of” passersby. The court requested supplemental briefing on the threshold issue of whether the traffic stop was lawful. The court then stated that if the stop was valid, it would deny the motion to suppress based on its finding that the plain- view doctrine applied. The court also determined that the inevitable- discovery doctrine would apply because the firearm would have been found during the inventory search. After the parties submitted the requested supplemental briefing, the _____________________ 1 Although he did at the district court, Porter does not make a Commerce Clause challenge on appeal.

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court concluded that the traffic stop was lawful, denied Porter’s motion to suppress, and explained that the stop was valid for three reasons: First, Officer Hoggard, had reasonable suspicion to initiate the traffic stop based solely on the automatic license plate reader, or the ALPR, hit that revealed an outstanding arrest warrant for Mr.

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United States v. Porter, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/united-states-v-porter-ca5-2026.