In Wyoming, police cannot search your phone during a traffic stop without your consent or a warrant. Your phone is considered private property protected under the Fourth Amendment, which guards against unreasonable searches and seizures. Generally, for police to search your phone, they must obtain a search warrant based on probable cause, except under specific limited circumstances.
During a routine traffic stop, officers can look through windows or search your vehicle only if they have probable cause—meaning they have reasonable grounds to believe there is evidence of a crime inside the car. However, this does not automatically extend to your phone, as digital devices have stronger privacy protections due to the intimate nature of their contents.
If the police ask to search your phone, you have the right to refuse consent. Refusing a search does not give them a legal reason to conduct it without a warrant. Consent must be explicitly given for a phone search to be lawful in the absence of a warrant. If the police do search the phone without your permission and lacking a warrant or exigent circumstances (such as immediate risk of evidence destruction or a threat to safety), that search can be challenged in court as unconstitutional.
There are exceptions where police may search a phone without a warrant, such as if the phone is seized incident to a lawful arrest and the search is limited to data directly related to the arrest. Even then, courts have increasingly demanded strict adherence to warrant requirements given the vast amount of private information phones contain.
In Wyoming, the law also supports that police cannot extend a traffic stop unreasonably just to search your phone without the original purpose of the stop or sufficient suspicion. If an officer wants to search your phone, they must articulate probable cause or have a warrant before doing so.
Unless you explicitly consent or the police have a warrant or exigent circumstances, police in Wyoming generally cannot search your phone during a traffic stop. Knowing these rights and clearly stating your refusal to consent to a phone search can help protect your privacy and prevent unlawful searches in such situations.
Sources
(https://www.steventituslaw.com/blog/can-a-police-officer-search-your-vehicle-without-a-warrant/)
(https://scholarship.law.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1137&context=scholar)
(https://www.uwyo.edu/studentatty/legal-information-by-topic/criminal-law-know-your-rights-.pdf)
(https://www.police1.com/legal/creative-troopers-traffic-stop-was-lawfully-extended)
(https://www1.law.umkc.edu/suni/Criminal_Procedure_I/Houghton.htm)
