Whether you agree or disagree, there’s a lot to unpack and discuss about your rights—and the realities—during a traffic stop. Let’s get into it.

I sit down with law student Troy Hendrickson to tackle a question I’ve noticed popping up everywhere on social media: Do you really have to get out of your car when the police tell you to? After watching numerous viral videos of people refusing officers’ orders during traffic stops, I decided it was time to demystify the legal history behind this scenario—especially the Supreme Court case Pennsylvania v. Mimms.

I explain why, yes, you do have to follow police instructions in these situations (even if you disagree), and why the courtroom—not the side of the road—is where you should fight any questionable police conduct. Along the way, Troy and I explore the wider issues: officer safety, misunderstandings about the law, and the rise of misinformation online.

Here are 3 key takeaways you should know:

• You must comply if ordered out of your vehicle. Thanks to the Supreme Court decision in Pennsylvania v. Mims (1977), police can lawfully order you out of your car during a stop, even for minor violations.
• The fight happens in court—not on the roadside. Challenging a police order (even if you think it’s unfair or unlawful) on the street will result in arrest or worse. “You’re going to lose that fight…and a window.”
• Understanding why is crucial. These rules are based on “officer safety” and the structure of the rule of law. If you think your rights were violated, work with an attorney after the fact.

Submit your questions to www.lawyertalkpodcast.com.

Recorded at Channel 511.

Stephen E. Palmer, Esq. has been practicing criminal defense almost exclusively since 1995. He has represented people in federal, state, and local courts in Ohio and elsewhere.

Though he focuses on all areas of criminal defense, he particularly enjoys complex cases in state and federal courts.

He has unique experience handling and assembling top defense teams of attorneys and experts in cases involving allegations of child abuse (false sexual allegations, false physical abuse allegations), complex scientific cases involving allegations of DUI and vehicular homicide cases with blood alcohol tests, and any other criminal cases that demand jury trial experience.

Steve has unique experience handling numerous high publicity cases that have garnered national attention.

For more information about Steve and his law firm, visit Palmer Legal Defense.

Copyright 2025 Stephen E. Palmer - Attorney At Law

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Lawyer talk, off the record, on the air. Back with Troy. They don't teach you that in law school, But I think this is more aptly put. They don't teach you this on TikTok.

Yes.

Or they don't teach you this on YouTube or Facebook or wherever you do your doom scrolling. And here's what I've noticed. I've noticed this. I guess it's not probably because there's more of them, but probably because what I'm watching, I guess there's an algorithm that covers. But I see all these people, men, women, a lot of teenage girls pulled over by the police. So I think there's a lot of people out there ordering body cam footage and then commenting on these platforms. And these people, I'll call them citizens, are refusing to get out of the car when the police pull them over. And they think that they can just sit there and say, I even saw one where it was a clear.

I think it turned out, or at least the comments were, that it was a JAG officer in the Air Force. And this woman was, you know, probably in her late 40s at least. And she's just sitting there staring like, I'm not getting out of the car. Like, she didn't have to. And clearly somebody's not teaching something in high school or elsewhere.

Well, she's a jag, so probably, I guess they didn't teach her in law school.

She was. And she would have been alive in 1977 when the Supreme Court decided this issue in a case called Pennsylvania vs. Mims. All right, so here's the deal, folks. If the police say, get out of the car after a traffic stop, you have to get out of the car after a traffic stop. If the police, like, if you're one of those people that thinks you're gonna, like, crack your window. It used to be this, you know, crack your window and then slide. No, they're gonna order you out of the car.

And guess what? You have to comply. And you would ask, what?

Why?

Well, not just why, but what happens if you don't?

Oh, yeah, what happens if you don't?

You're gonna get arrested. Now, here's how this works. In 1977, there was a guy named Mims. I forget his first name, but I think it's Harry Mims. But there was a guy named Mims, and he's pulled over lawfully for a traffic violation, and the police order him out of the car. He gets out of the car, they see a bulge in his pocket, and they pat him down. They Find a gun or some other contraband or something, and this case goes all the way up to the Supreme Court. Now backtrack a little bit because there's another case called Delaware vs.

Prowse that says a police stop of a motor vehicle is a significant intrusion that requires justification under the Fourth Amendment. How about that for nice law school, however many years ago? So at the outset, if the police are gonna stop your car, they have to have reasonable suspicion. What is that? Well, that's something less than probable cause, more than nothing. Do the voodoo yourself. A traffic violation almost always, if not always, is reasonable suspicion, but it could be more than that. You know, the police could see you, like, holding up your clipboard while you suck down a beer and whatever. If the police think you're doing something wrong while driving and they have a good reasonable basis, they can articulate it and explain it. They can.

Super minor too. Like just literally like merging over the lanes or anything like that.

Doesn't take much. Yeah, doesn't take.

The standards are very low.

Standards are low. And believe it or not, a lot of the law on this was developed through drunk driving because you can imagine why. You know, the stop of the car is what starts the whole thing anyway. So at the outset, the police have to have reasonable suspicion to pull you over. Once they get that reasonable suspicion to pull you over and they say, sir, I'd like you to step out of the vehicle. They don't say car, they always say vehicle, please. Or sometimes they say, sir, I'd like you to exit the motor vehicle. That sounds more important.

But anyway, they order you out of the car. And then you see on YouTube these people like, I'm not saying anything, and they just stare straight ahead. Sir, we need you, or ma', am, we need you to exit the motor vehicle. And these people just sit there. And eventually, if you watch these videos, there's plenty of them where they break the window, Just yank them out.

Yeah.

And then they start. Then the screaming commences. Don't touch me. You're touching me. You're hurting me. And look, I sympathize with these people because I fought the man my entire life.

I feel like they're more first step towards turning into the sovereign citizen people. This is like the intro level.

Well, I wonder. Well, let's finish Mims and we'll talk about the why. So Mims basically says this. The US Supreme Court says, look, this is a reasonable intrusion. Getting out of a car is not a significant enough intrusion that requires anything more than the initial reasonable suspicion. For the traffic stop. And the idea, of course, what I don't like about this is that it creates this catch all called officer safety. In the wake of Mimms, we always hear this for officer safety.

I did this. Police would say on the witness stand, and I'm like, wait a minute, I don't remember an officer's safety exception to cuffing my guy and throwing him in the dirt. But it's created sort of this separate exception to the fourth amendment, the pseudo exception of officer safety. And we can debate about it. Now, look, none of this is to say I agree with it. None of this is to say that I wouldn't fight it in court. But the point is you fight it in court, not on the side of the road. Which leads us to the question you were asking, like, all right, well, what now? I forgot the question.

It was like the why?

The why, yeah. Or what's going on? Why do these people think that. Why do these people think that they can do this? Why do these people think that they're allowed to just refuse an order of the cops?

In my head, they're like, you can't just boss me around, do whatever you want with me. They think that they don't have the reasonable suspicion to take them out of the car. And I, I somewhat agree with the officer safety exception. However, you see this with videos of people like Aunt Franny getting pulled out of the car. It's like, what's the. You really think you're concerned for your safety about Aunt Franny? I don't know.

Yeah, but why doesn't Aunt Franny just obey the order in the first place?

She's had a bad day, had a bad day that bingo didn't go her way.

Well, I wonder, because I think for a society to work, I think a few things have to be true. There has to be a rule of law. So this anarchy that people are on the streets arguing for, that doesn't work. There's no society. You have to have rules, you have to have boundaries. And I think the boundaries have to be reasonable. And I think everybody has to understand what those boundaries are and agree to play by the rules. So you end up in this anarchy.

Anarchist. I don't know what the right word, but if people say, I not only think those, I'm not going to follow the rules, it ends in chaos. So, like, I wonder a lot about this socially, why people think on YouTube or elsewhere or these people think that you can't, you don't have to follow the lawful order of a cop and it's not that I'm not sympathetic with them and it's not that I would necessarily wouldn't fight the rule again. But there's this notion that somehow there's a. As Jackie Gleason said, famous Jackie Gleason said in Smoking the Bandit, what we're dealing with here is a complete lack of respect for the law. And it sort of is that, you know, it's like, I hate you because you're a cop and all cops are bad and we don't have to follow any lawful order. The cops. Again, I'm not a card carrying champion of the police all the time.

In fact, I have probably done more or as much as anyone to go fight egregious police behavior in a courtroom. You know, it's what I do for a living.

Yeah.

But I'm still good friends with the police, many of them. I still respect what they do. I still have a respect for the law and I understand it. So let me say this. If you think you're gonna fight the battle as to whether the police have a right to order you out of the car or order you to do anything at all on the side of the road in real time, you're mistaken. You're going to lose that fight and a window and you're going to lose a window where you're going to end up face down on the ground in cuffs, screaming and hollering. And that sucks. Yeah, I can help you in court later if you call me later and said the police pulled me over, they didn't have a good reason, they ordered me out of the car and I got all this trouble.

Well, now I can take that into court and say this conduct violated the fourth Amendment and therefore it should be redressed. We should be able to deal with it here in court. That's where the rule of law takes it. You don't get to do it on a Saturday. Even if the police are wrong, if you try to fight that fight, bad things happen. And the worst thing that happens is suspects get shot or hurt or police get shot or hurt. I know we're joking about sort of tongue in cheek, but the logical, worst extension of this is somebody gets really hurt. And you would say, well, it's not fair that the police are targeting me.

It's not fair the police are doing. I agree that may be true. I will take that into a courtroom and I will fight it with you with everything that I've got. We'll get the body cam footage, we get the dash cam footage, we'll get the witnesses on the witness stand. And if what they did is wrong, we're going to find a remedy. But it's not on the side of the road at the time. You're almost always going to lose. Not almost.

You're always going to lose that fight. Always going to lose that argument on the side of the road. They're going to call, you know, sergeant in, and they're going to call whoever in. You always hear that, I want the sergeant. I am the sergeant. I want whoever's in. I am that person. So it's just not going to work.

I don't. Are they teaching the animals?

No, they do teach it. They do teach it.

So you wonder, it's like, why do people think maybe they should teach it in high school?

I think that's like a little above. At least. I didn't pay attention a lot in high school. I was kind of just the medicine class. So if they did teach us in high school, I did not grasp it whatsoever. I probably skipped that day.

Gotcha. Anyway, well, look, this is good stuff. If you got a question or comment, if you agree or disagree with this, let's let us know in the comments. And we're going to get to it. We've got a whole list of comments we're going to respond to right here on Lawyer Talk. We'll get to it, I promise. Check us out LawyerTalkPodcast.com on the website and get all the backlog, all the good stuff from years ago right there. And you can even send a question in the format there or leave it in the comments.

Lawyer Talk, off the record, on the air till now.