Chicago Police Department traffic‑stop lawsuit gains class‑action status

A federal judge has certified a class of Black and Latino drivers in a civil‑rights lawsuit against the Chicago Police Department (CPD). U.S. District Judge Mary Rowland ruled that the plaintiffs – thousands of Black and Latino motorists stopped since June 2021 – may proceed as a class action seeking a court order to change CPD traffic‑stop practices. The suit does not seek monetary damages, but aims to halt what plaintiffs allege is a discriminatory program that uses minor traffic violations as a pretext to investigate drivers for guns, drugs and other crimes.

The case builds on decades of challenges to CPD’s stop tactics, which shifted in the mid‑2010s from aggressive pedestrian stops to large‑scale traffic enforcement on Chicago’s South and West sides. City records show traffic stops rose from about 83,000 in 2014 to nearly 600,000 by 2019, with over 90 % of those stopped identified as Black or Latino. While the city denies operating an unlawful “mass traffic stop program,” it acknowledges that police leaders encouraged increased traffic enforcement as a strategy to reduce violent crime.