In United States v. Hylton, --- F.4th ---, No. 21-10026 (9th Cir. 2022), the Court affirmed the district court’s orders denying (1) a motion to suppress evidence of a gun found in the defendant’s vehicle during a traffic stop, (2) a motion for judgment of acquittal, and (3) a motion to dismiss the firearm counts.
Most importantly, the Court held that a criminal history check is a permissible part of a routine traffic stop: "we join our sister circuits and hold that because a criminal history check 'stems from the mission of the stop itself,' it is a 'negligibly burdensome precaution[]' necessary “to complete [the stop] safely.' The officers thus did not need independent reasonable suspicion to perform the criminal history check."
