Reversing Motion to Dismiss Based on Equal Protection Violation in Traffic Stop

US v. Moore: One evening in Richmond, police officers stopped three different vehicles that all had the same license plate number. The first two drivers were allowed to go. The third driver “fled, running several stop signs before crashing into the curb,” with the driver, Moore, then trying to escape on foot. Officers found a gun in the floorboard of the car and Moore was charged with being a felon in possession of a firearm.

Moore filed a motion to suppress in which he argued that the neighborhood in which he was stopped was home to “almost exclusively black residents” and that all the stops were pretextual. At a hearing, Moore presented evidence that “Black drivers were, on average, pulled over more frequently than White drivers.” In supplemental briefing Moore shifted his argument, arguing that the indictment should be dismissed “because the police officers had violated his Fourteenth Amendment right to equal protection by targeting him and other Black residents of the Fourth Precinct, using pretextual stops to search their cars.” An expert witness would confirm that Black drivers were pulled over much more frequently than White ones in Richmond, but admitted the data “revealed a ‘somewhat weak’ but still ‘important’ relationship between race and the likelihood of being pulled over.” He could not, however, determine whether any particular stop was a result of bias or profiling. The district court denied the motion to suppress, but granted the motion to dismiss, concluding that Moore had proven selective enforcement of traffic laws along racial lines and that “this selective enforcement led to his current charges.”

On appeal, the Fourth Circuit reversed the dismissal of the indictment against Moore. The court noted that in order to prevail on an equal protection claim Moore had to prove both a discriminatory effect in enforcement as well as that the enforcement was motivated by a discriminatory purpose. Going to the second factor, the court concluded that “there is a complete absence of evidence that the officers acted with discriminatory purpose,” much less the clear evidence required, noting that aside from the stop, that Moore fled. The expanded nature of the inquiry in the district court, bolstered by the statistical information, “was insufficient to show a discriminatory purpose.”