


Warren was then arrested and searched and was found to be carrying an unlicensed gun and was charged with illegal possession, but the court threw out the conviction and stated that Warren should not have been stopped in the first place.

Matthew Segal, the legal director of the ACLU of Massachusetts, said that Tuesday’s ruling was a “powerful” one.

“The state’s highest court, in talking about people of color, it’s saying that their lives matter and under the law, their views matter,” Segal said. “The reason that’s significant is that all the time in police-civilian encounters there are disputes about what is suspicious and what is not suspicious. So this is an opinion that looks at those encounters through the eyes of a black man who might justifiably be concerned that he will be the victim of profiling.”