Police are no longer be required to even give the appearance of an understanding of the laws they're tasked with enforcing, thanks to a recent court decision surpassing even the veritable green light previously granted in Heien v. North Carolina.

In the Heien case, the Supreme Court ruled a "police officer's reasonable mistake of law gives rise to reasonable suspicion that justifies a traffic stop under the Fourth Amendment." A motorist's broken tail light caused an officer to make a traffic stop — during which evidence of a separate violation of the law was discovered in the vehicle.

But in North Carolina, a broken tail light wasn't illegal, thus not sufficient cause to justify the stop — nor the arrests stemming from it, lawyers argued, because that would be a violation of unreasonable searches and seizures.