Civic Register
| 4.25.19
Is 'Chalking' Tires an Unreasonable Search by Parking Enforcement Officers?
Does marking your car with chalk constitute an unreasonable search?
What’s the story?
- Chalking tires to enforce parking rules is unconstitutional, a federal appeals court has ruled.
- The three-judge panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati ruled that parking officers who use chalk to mark tires as a way to keep track of how long someone has been parked constitutes an unreasonable search under the Fourth Amendment.
- The ruling affects Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee.
What’s the backstory?
- The three-judge panel reinstated a case from 2017 brought by Alison Taylor, who was issued 15 parking tickets during a three year timespan in Saginaw, Michigan. All citations were written by the same parking enforcement officer, who was described in the suit as Saginaw’s “most prolific issuer of parking tickets."
- The city of Saginaw had argued that because people have reduced expectation of privacy in automobiles, and because of the “community caretaker exception” (which allows law enforcement to intervene if public safety is at risk), the chalking “search” was reasonable.
What are people saying?
“The City commences its search on vehicles that are parked legally, without probable cause or even so much as ‘individualized suspicious of wrongdoing’ – the touchstone of the reasonableness standard,” Circuit Judge Bernice Bouie Donald wrote in the decision.
- She added that overstaying your welcome at a parking space doesn't cause "injury or ongoing harm to the community” and therefore isn’t subject to "community caretaking" rules, potentially justifying a search without a warrant.
- Orin Kerr, a law professor at University of Southern California, devoted a twitter thread to the ruling and offered a suggestion to parking enforcement: “seems easy enough these days for parking enforcers to just take a photo of the car, or even just a close-up photo of the tire, rather than chalk it. That way parking enforcement can learn the placement of the car w/o physically marking it. No 4A issues then.”
What do you think?
Do you think that “chalking” should be considered a search? If so, would it be reasonable or unreasonable? Why or why not? Take action above and tell your reps, then share your thoughts below.
—Veronica You
(Photo Credit: iStockphoto / shaun)
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