On July 22, 2026, the Michigan Supreme Court decided People v Wilkins, Docket No. 167737, and answered a question that has come up at thousands of Michigan traffic stops since voters legalized marijuana in 2018: can a police officer search your car without a warrant based on probable cause that you committed only a civil infraction?
The Court’s answer, by a 5-2 vote, was no.
This article explains what the Court decided, what it did not decide, and why the distinction matters if you are facing charges that came out of a vehicle search.
The facts of the case
On January 16, 2023, a Michigan State Police trooper pulled over Freddie Wilkins, III, for speeding. Mr. Wilkins was driving; a passenger sat in the front seat. As the trooper approached the open passenger-side window, he smelled marijuana.
Several things the trooper did not observe turned out to matter:
- He did not see marijuana in plain view at any point.
- He saw no signs that either occupant was intoxicated or had been smoking.
- On cross-examination, he acknowledged that it “didn’t smell like [defendant] had just smoked it.”
The trooper took both licenses and learned that both occupants were under 21. He called for backup, asked whether they had marijuana, and both said no. He then ordered Mr. Wilkins out of the car and searched him — a search the prosecution later conceded went beyond what a Terry frisk allows and was not supported by probable cause. Nothing was found.
The trooper next questioned the passenger, who said she had “some shake” — a small amount of marijuana. On that basis, the trooper searched the vehicle. He found no marijuana. He did find a backpack containing empty cellophane packaging and a loaded semiautomatic pistol with an extended magazine, which Mr. Wilkins admitted was his.
Mr. Wilkins was charged with carrying a concealed weapon in a vehicle under MCL 750.227. He moved to suppress the gun, arguing the search was unconstitutional. The district court, the Kent Circuit Court, and the Court of Appeals all ruled against him. The Supreme Court reversed.
The legal question: civil infraction versus crime
Under the Fourth Amendment, warrantless searches are presumed unreasonable. The “automobile exception” is one of the narrow exceptions — it lets an officer search a readily mobile vehicle without a warrant when there is probable cause to believe the vehicle contains contraband or evidence of a crime.
The Michigan Regulation and Taxation of Marihuana Act (MRTMA) changed what counts as a crime. Under MCL 333.27965(3)(a) and (b), a person under 21 who possesses 2.5 ounces or less of marijuana is responsible for a civil infraction on a first or second violation. Criminal penalties are retained for larger amounts under MCL 333.27965(4).
So the question became: is probable cause of a civil infraction enough to trigger the automobile exception?
What the Court held about marijuana car searches in Michigan
Writing for the majority, Justice Kimberly A. Thomas held that it is not.
A civil infraction is, by statutory definition, not a crime (MCL 257.6a; MCL 600.113(1)(a)). It therefore cannot be “evidence of a crime.” And the Court declined to stretch the word “contraband” — a term rooted in Prohibition-era cases like Carroll v United States that involved criminal violations — to cover items prohibited only by civil law. As the opinion puts it, “substances prohibited only by civil law are not ‘contraband’ for purposes of supporting a warrantless search of an automobile based on probable cause under the Fourth Amendment.”
Two threads run through the reasoning:
Reduced state interest. When Michigan voters moved marijuana offenses out of criminal law by ballot initiative, they signaled a reduced interest in enforcement. The official ballot language told voters the Act would “change several current violations from crimes to civil infractions.” Meanwhile, the individual’s privacy interest in their vehicle did not shrink.
Proportionality. The Court emphasized that Fourth Amendment reasonableness “demands some proportionality between the violation being investigated and the acceptable intrusion.” Because most traffic stops involve civil infractions, allowing searches for evidence of civil violations “risks converting nearly every traffic stop into a search.”
The Court then applied that rule to the facts. Because the amount of marijuana is what separates a civil infraction from a crime, an officer must have probable cause that a criminal amount is present. The smell of marijuana, the Court held, “does not per se provide probable cause regarding possession of a criminal amount” — odor perception is subjective and affected by environmental factors. And the passenger’s statement about “some shake” gave no reason to believe the amount exceeded 2.5 ounces.
The Court of Appeals judgment was reversed and the case was remanded to the Kent Circuit Court.
Justice Elizabeth M. Welch concurred in full but wrote separately to say she would have decided the case under Article 1, § 11 of the 1963 Michigan Constitution rather than federal law. Justice Brian K. Zahra, joined by Justice Richard H. Bernstein, dissented, reasoning that no one in the vehicle could lawfully possess any marijuana, that the MRTMA subjects such marijuana to forfeiture, and that items subject to civil forfeiture have been treated as “contraband” under Fourth Amendment caselaw. The dissent also disputed the majority’s framing of the record, noting that the trooper never testified he suspected only a civil-infraction quantity and that “what constitutes a small amount is a matter of interpretation.”
What the ruling does not do
This is where careful reading matters, and where a lot of secondhand summaries get it wrong.
The Court expressly noted that “[n]othing in this opinion affects the police power to search for evidence of criminal violations.” With probable cause, an officer may still search a vehicle for evidence of:
- Driving under the influence of marijuana (MCL 257.625)
- Distribution or possession of criminal quantities of marijuana (MCL 333.7401; MCL 333.27965(1), (2), and (4))
The Court also reaffirmed that the smell of marijuana may still be one factor in a probable cause analysis — just not a stand-alone one. It offered concrete examples: if the trooper had seen a criminal amount of marijuana in plain view, seen the driver smoking, observed dissipating smoke, or noticed signs of intoxication, the smell combined with any of those facts “may well have established probable cause to search the vehicle.”
In other words, Wilkins is a rule about what odor alone can support. It is not a rule that marijuana is irrelevant to a search.
Why this matters if you are facing charges
Search-and-seizure issues are often the single most consequential part of a criminal case. When a court finds a search unconstitutional, the evidence it produced is generally excluded — which is exactly what is now at stake for Mr. Wilkins, whose weapons charge rested on a firearm found during the search.
Wilkins builds on People v Armstrong, decided in April 2025, in which the Court held that the smell of marijuana alone is not enough to establish probable cause. Together, the two decisions substantially narrow what Michigan officers can do based on odor at a traffic stop.
If your case involves a vehicle search that began with an officer reporting the smell of marijuana, the specifics matter enormously: what the officer actually saw, what was said, whether anyone appeared impaired, how the stop unfolded and how long it lasted, and how old the occupants were. Those details are what determine whether Wilkins helps you.
This article is provided for general informational purposes and is not legal advice. Reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship. Every case turns on its own facts. If you are facing charges arising from a vehicle search in Michigan, consult a criminal defense attorney about your specific situation.