The Michigan Supreme Court just handed drivers a major win, ruling that police can no longer search a vehicle solely because they catch a whiff of marijuana.
In a 5-2 decision released July 22, the state’s highest court made clear that the smell of weed — or even evidence pointing only to a minor civil marijuana violation — isn’t enough to justify a warrantless car search. Officers now need probable cause that an actual crime has taken place.
The ruling builds on a 2025 decision that already overturned a 25-year-old precedent allowing cops to dig through cars based on odor alone. After Michigan voters legalized recreational cannabis in 2018, the court said the old rules no longer made sense.
“The smell of marijuana might just as likely indicate that the person is in possession of a legal amount of marijuana, recently used marijuana legally, or was simply in the presence of someone else who used marijuana,” Justice Megan K. Cavanagh wrote in the earlier opinion.
This latest case, People v. Wilkins, started with a routine traffic stop in Kent County in January 2023. A state trooper pulled over Freddie Wilkins III for speeding, smelled marijuana through an open window, and noted that both the driver and passenger were under 21. No one looked high, nothing was in plain sight, and the search still turned up a gun. The Supreme Court tossed the evidence, saying the trooper only had reason to suspect a civil infraction — not a crime.
Justice Kimberly A. Thomas, writing for the majority, put it plainly: probable cause of a civil ticket doesn’t equal the green light for a full vehicle search. Because the line between a civil violation and a criminal one comes down to how much marijuana is present, officers need more than just the smell to go further.
The decision doesn’t mean police are powerless. The odor can still factor into a search if it’s paired with other red flags — signs of impairment, visible weed, admissions of larger amounts, or erratic driving. Impaired-driving investigations and underage possession rules remain fully intact.
For Michigan’s cannabis community and everyday drivers, the message is clearer than it’s been in years: a lingering smell of weed isn’t an automatic invitation for police to start digging through your car.
