Kansas v. Charles Glover

Summary

The Court held that an officer who learns that a vehicle’s registered owner has a revoked driver’s license may reasonably infer that the owner is driving and initiate an investigative traffic stop, absent information negating that inference. Reasonable suspicion may rest on ordinary commonsense inferences and need not always derive from specialized police training or experience. The Court reversed the Kansas Supreme Court and remanded. Justice Kagan, joined by Justice Ginsburg, concurred, emphasizing Kansas’s practice of revoking licenses for serious or repeated driving violations and the possibility that additional evidence could defeat reasonable suspicion in other cases. Justice Sotomayor’s dissent is referenced, but its text is not supplied.