This Is What Happens When You Drive Through Kansas With Out-Of-State Plates

Kansas isn’t high on most travel bucket lists, but tens of thousands of drivers pass through it each day, especially along the heavily trafficked corridor of Interstate 70. Now, a federal court has ruled that the Kansas Highway Patrol (KHP) violated the constitutional rights of those drivers by routinely targeting vehicles with out-of-state license plates.

The decision is a sharp rebuke of longstanding police practices and confirms that KHP’s traffic stops crossed a legal line.

Profiling on the Open Road

At the center of the case, Shaw v. Jones, is KHP’s long-standing practice of singling out drivers with out-of-state license plates, especially vehicles traveling to or from Colorado, and extending traffic stops without reasonable suspicion.

Originally filed in 2020 by the ACLU of Kansas and the law firm Spencer Fane LLP, the lawsuit argued that troopers routinely relied on drivers’ residency and travel plans to justify prolonged detentions, vehicle searches, and canine sniffs.

More: Driver Arrested For Laughing At Cop After Flashing His Lights

The 10th Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed jury verdicts and district court findings that KHP’s policies and training violated constitutional protections against unreasonable searches and seizures. In 2016, another case established that a driver’s state of residency and travel along I-70 are “completely innocuous” factors that cannot justify suspicion. Despite that, KHP continued to ignore that ruling, said the judges of the 10th Circuit.

By the Numbers

According to the ACLU, out-of-state drivers made up roughly 35 percent of traffic on Kansas Highways. Despite that, 77 percent of KHP traffic stops were on drivers from out of state. On top of that, 90 percent of the canine searches conducted by the KHP were on out-of-state drivers. Troopers also testified that a driver’s state of origin was routinely used to develop reasonable suspicion.

The Kansas Two-Step

At this stage, the KHP has to revise its training and instruct troopers that residency is irrelevant under the Fourth Amendment. That said, the court did relax some of the previous rulings against the so-called “Kansas Two-Step”. That’s a controversial tactic where troopers signal the end of a stop, then immediately re-engage drivers in an effort to initiate a “consensual” encounter and build new suspicion.

The court emphasized that it has never ruled the Two-Step itself unconstitutional and has previously upheld the practice in specific cases. As a result, it ordered the district court to narrow its injunction, allowing KHP to continue using the tactic while still requiring constitutional compliance during traffic stops.

As some lawyers have pointed out, a consensual encounter is one that drivers can simply deny should they choose to. In other words, if a Kansas Highway Patrol vehicle does the ‘two-step,’ driving away without further interaction might be the right move.