Ohio law

Ohio has no statute governing how police use license plate readers. No retention limit, no policy requirement, no sharing restriction, no audit mandate. What the legislature did do, in the 2025 budget bill, was exempt plate reader data from the Public Records Act. The one ALPR bill pending regulates commercial use and exempts law enforcement by name. So whatever rules apply in Deer Park are the rules Deer Park's council writes — and it has not written any.

There is no Ohio ALPR statute governing police use

We looked for one. There is no Ohio Revised Code section that caps how long police may keep plate reader data, requires an agency to adopt a written ALPR policy, restricts which outside agencies may search an Ohio department's cameras, or requires any audit or public reporting.

One qualification, stated up front rather than buried: Ohio law is not silent on plate readers altogether. Effective September 30, 2025, the Public Records Act excludes plate reader images and data held in a law enforcement database from the definition of a public record.¹ It regulates disclosure, not use. The clause, and what it means for a records request, is set out under the Public Records Act section below.

This is the central fact of this page, and it cuts in a specific direction: the absence of state law does not mean the practice is unregulated by default. It means the regulation is local. Whatever governs Flock in Deer Park is whatever Deer Park's council puts in writing. Council has put nothing in writing.²

Cleveland demonstrated what that local authority is worth in practice. In July 2026 its council wrote warrant requirements, a data-use restriction, a 25 percent penalty clause, quarterly reporting, and a fusion-center prohibition directly into the ordinance authorizing the contract.³ No state law required any of it. A council simply voted.

House Bill 725 — read the exemptions

There is one ALPR bill in the 136th General Assembly. It is regularly described in community discussions as an Ohio plate-reader bill, which overstates it considerably.

HB 725, sponsored by Rep. Kevin D. Miller, would enact R.C. 4549.07 "to restrict the collection, use, sale, transfer, and sharing of data collected from an automated license plate recognition system for commercial purposes."⁴ It was introduced March 3, 2026 and referred to the House Public Safety Committee on March 4, 2026. As of July 29, 2026 no hearings are listed and it has not been reported out of committee.⁵

The operative prohibition is narrow:

No person, for commercial purposes, shall knowingly collect, use, sell, transfer, or share any images, information, or other data collected from an automated license plate recognition system. H.B. No. 725, as introduced, division (B)⁴

And then division (C) exempts, among others:

The collection, use, or sharing of images, information, or other data collected from an automated license plate recognition system by a law enforcement agency or peace officer in the course of the agency or officer's law enforcement activities; H.B. No. 725, division (C)(2)⁴

The collection, use, sale, transfer, or sharing of images, information, or other data collected from an automated license plate recognition system by a public entity to another public entity; H.B. No. 725, division (C)(3)⁴

The collection, use, sale, transfer, or sharing of images, information, or other data collected from an automated license plate recognition system in accordance with section 149.43 or 4501.27 of the Revised Code. H.B. No. 725, division (C)(4)⁴

The lever residents actually have: R.C. 149.43

Ohio's Public Records Act is the practical tool. Deer Park's own published policy is favorable to requesters, and residents should know its terms:

• A request does not have to be in writing, and the requester does not have to give a name or explain why they want the record.⁷ The statute is stronger than the policy here: any requirement that a requester disclose identity or intended use "constitutes a denial of the request."¹
• The first 10 paper pages are free; beyond that the charge is five cents per page, and a CD is $1.00.⁷
• The city's stated policy is that the Act "should be interpreted liberally in favor of disclosure," and that exemptions "will be narrowly construed by this office in the favor of disclosure."⁷
• Two enforcement routes exist. A $25 complaint to the Court of Claims under R.C. 2743.75, decided by a special master after mandatory mediation, recovering the fee and costs but expressly not attorney fees.⁸ Or a mandamus action under R.C. 149.43(C), carrying statutory damages of $100 per business day to a $1,000 maximum, court costs, and possibly attorney fees — but only after a three-business-day cure period, with damages running from the filing date rather than the date of the refusal.¹ A requester may use one route or the other, not both.⁸

Deer Park's policy carries an effective date of November 29, 2007.⁷ It describes only the mandamus remedy, which is unsurprising: the Court of Claims route did not exist in 2007, and R.C. 149.43 has been amended roughly twenty times since.¹ Read the policy as the city's stated posture, and the statute as the law.

Contracts, invoices, general orders, ordinances and appropriations are ordinary public records. We have written out exactly what to request.

The exemption Ohio added in 2025

This belongs on this page more than anywhere else on the site, because it is the one place where Ohio law affirmatively took something away from residents.

The statute now excludes from the definition of "public record":

Images and data captured by an automated license plate recognition system that are maintained in a law enforcement database. R.C. 149.43(A)(1)(yy), effective September 30, 2025¹

We verified the change by comparing versions of the statute. The clause is absent from the version effective April 9, 2025 and present in the version effective September 30, 2025 — whose listed legislation is House Bill 96, the state budget bill — and in the version effective September 7, 2026.^1,9

The practical effect on a records request is limited but real, and residents should know it before they send one. Plate images and reads: exempt. The contract, invoices, written policy, retention configuration, sharing settings, ordinances and vendor correspondence: not covered by the clause. The search audit log — who ran queries and what reason they gave — is the genuinely unsettled case, since it is a record about use of the system rather than data captured by it. Columbus produced exactly that kind of audit at a council member's request in July 2026, which establishes it exists and can be released.¹⁰ We word the request accordingly.

What Ohio courts have said — and have not

Chatrie v. United States (U.S. Supreme Court, June 2026)

The Supreme Court held 6–3, in an opinion by Justice Kagan, that police conducted a Fourth Amendment search when they obtained a person's cell-phone location data, because "an individual has a reasonable expectation of privacy in his cell-phone location information."¹¹ The judgment below, 136 F. 4th 100, was vacated and remanded.¹¹

The Norfolk case

The Institute for Justice sued Norfolk, Virginia over its Flock network on behalf of plaintiffs who had been recorded by the city's cameras hundreds of times in a few months. The federal district court ruled for the city in January 2026, and IJ announced an appeal to the Fourth Circuit.¹⁴

We include this because it cuts against our position and should be stated anyway: at least one federal court has looked at a municipal Flock network and declined to find a constitutional violation. The law here is contested and unresolved, which is precisely why the decision sits with council rather than with a judge.

What other Ohio agencies have done without waiting for the legislature

Colerain Township (Hamilton County) adopted written ALPR Policy 5.40 on April 8, 2025, capping retention at 30 days.¹⁵ This is the most useful comparator on this entire site: a neighboring agency in the same county, subject to the same absence of state law, that chose to write a rule.

Dayton publishes a public ALPR disclosure page, and in 2026 suspended its program outright after finding roughly 7,100 immigration-related search requests in its data.^16,17

Cleveland amended its authorizing ordinance in July 2026 with the terms listed above.³

Central Ohio shows the scale of the spend: WOSU obtained records showing 15 departments holding contracts for 319 cameras totaling nearly $2 million.¹⁸

Marion is going further than any other Ohio city we found. Its legislation, codes and regulations committee heard more than 90 minutes of public comment on July 22, 2026 on an ordinance that would ban Flock and similar technology inside city limits and make continued use a misdemeanor. The committee took no action and continued the matter to August 3, 2026.¹⁹ Worth noting for accuracy: the contract there belongs to the Marion County Sheriff's Office, not the city, and Marion police access the data — so a city ordinance is a harder instrument in Marion than it would be in Deer Park, where the program is the city's own.¹⁹

The pattern is that Ohio's ALPR rules are being made one council at a time. Deer Park's council has not yet made any.