A U.S. District Court judge ordered the Kansas Highway Patrol to pay $2.34 million in attorney fees and other costs following a successful challenge to constitutionality of the state law enforcement agency’s practice of detaining motorists and searching vehicles without establishing reasonable suspicion. The American Civil Liberties Union of Kansas, the national ACLU and the Spencer Fane law firm went to court in 2020 to assert KHP’s policy guiding traffic stops violated the 4th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution because troopers engaged in unreasonable searches and seizures of cars and trucks in the quest to deter drug trafficking on major highways.
