Sixth Circuit Holds that Suspicionless Chalking Car Tires for Parking Enforcement Violates the Fourth Amendment
This case law update was written by Michael J. Sgarlat, an attorney at the law firm of Shaw Bransford & Roth, where he has practiced federal personnel and employment law since 2015. Mr. Sgarlat works with federal employees to respond to proposed disciplinary and adverse actions, and has experience litigating cases before the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board.
Saginaw, a city in Michigan, chalked car tires to enforce parking regulations. Recently, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit considered whether suspicionless tire chalking is a valid administrative search.
Plaintiff Alison Taylor received several parking tickets from the City of Saginaw for leaving her car downtown beyond the time permitted under a city ordinance. Each time, defendant Tabitha Hoskins chalked Taylor’s vehicle tires before issuing a ticket. Each ticket noted the time the vehicle was first marked.
Taylor brough a 42 U.S.C. § 1983 complaint against the City and Hoskins, alleging that tire chalking violated her Fourth Amendment rights. At the motion to dismiss phase, the district court held tire chalking falls within the automobile and/or community caretaking exceptions and was not a Fourth Amendment violation.
Before the court of appeals for the first time, it reversed. Then, on remand, defendants moved for summary judgment and the district court granted the motion. Taylor also moved for class certification and the district court denied Taylor’s motion as moot.
On appeal for a second time, the court of appeals reviewed the district court’s grant of summary judgment. As explained by the court of appeals, to determine whether a Fourth Amendment violation occurred, it asks two questions – whether the alleged government conduct constitutes a search under the Fourth Amendment, and whether the search was reasonable.
The court found that chalking was a search for Fourth Amendment purposes. The court described chalking as a physical trespass to a constitutionally protected area with the intent to obtain information. And because chalking is a search, and the defendant did not obtain a warrant, the court found that it is presumptively unreasonable. However, the warrant requirement is subject to several exceptions, and here the government raised the applicability of the administrative-search exception.
The court explained that when a search is conducted for an administrative purpose and pursuant to a regulatory scheme, like inspecting a home for compliance to housing code, the government may justify a warrantless search. The court stated that this is assessed by “balancing the need to search against the invasion which the search entails.” But before the search occurs, the subject of the search “must be afforded an opportunity to obtain precompliance review before a neutral decisionmaker.” The City contended that the search in question falls within the limited sub-classes of administrative searches that do not mandate precompliance review.
First, it raised the “closely regulated industries” category. In this category, businesses have such a history of government oversight that no reasonable expectation of privacy could exist, making precompliance review unnecessary. The court disagreed, though. It stated that municipal parking “plainly” does not pose a similar risk that typical closely regulated industries face. Such industries include liquor sales, firearm dealing, mining, or junkyards.
Next, the City argued that the administrative-search exception authorizes “regimes of suspicionless searches where the program was designed to serve special needs, beyond the normal need for law enforcement.” An example of suspicionless searches to serve special needs is highway checkpoints for immigration or sobriety. The court saw no special need here. And the court noted that “for nearly as long as automobiles have parked along city streets, municipalities have found ways to enforce parking regulations without implicating the Fourth Amendment.”
Accordingly, the court held that the administrative-search exception does not justify the City’s suspicionless chalking of tires to enforce parking regulations. However, the court determined that Hoskins was entitled to qualified immunity, as reasonable parking officers would not understand from court precedent that suspicionless chalking of car tires violates the Fourth Amendment.
The court affirmed the district court’s grant of summary judgment for Hoskins, reversed its grant of summary judgment for the City, and remanded for further proceedings.
Read the full case: Taylor v. City of Saginaw
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