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The Fourth Amendment guarantees that people are secure from unreasonable searches and seizures. Pretextual stops are situations where officers use minor infractions to pull over motorists as a pretext for investigating them for drugs, weapons, or other crimes. These stops can lead to significant intrusions on liberty, including racial profiling and violent confrontations. Nevertheless, in Whren v. U.S., 517 U.S. 806 (1996), the U.S. Supreme Court held that these pretextual stops do not violate the Fourth Amendment. Since Whren, pretextual stops have surged, disproportionately affecting Black drivers.

In this case, police pulled over the defendant, a Black man, for failing to stop at a stop sign and then called a drug-sniffing dog as a part of 鈥渃ommon practice鈥� to 鈥渃heck Mr. Branch out.鈥� Mr. Branch was subsequently arrested for possession of drugs with intent to distribute. Applying Whren, as well as Maryland precedent following Whren for purposes of interpreting the Maryland Constitution, a trial court held that the stop was constitutional and denied the defendant鈥檚 motion to suppress the evidence arising from the stop. The defendant then petition the Maryland Supreme Court to take the case, arguing that the Supreme Court of Maryland should part ways with Whren in interpreting the search-and-seizure protections of Article 26 of the Maryland Declaration of Rights.

The ACLU and the ACLU of Maryland filed an amicus brief in support of the defendant鈥檚 petition. In that brief, the ACLU argued that Article 26 of the Maryland Declaration of Rights should be construed to be more protective than the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution when it comes to pretextual traffic stops. Among other things, the brief reasoned that pretextual traffic stops lead to arbitrary and unconstrainted stops and searches, as well as racial profiling. Certiorari was denied in September 2024.