In chappachula’s scenario? Doubtful that’s what he was presuming as we’re talking about public street parking, law enforcement and the fourth amendment.
It wouldn’t be a fourth amendment violation if a private parking lot owner required you to allow chalking the tire - only governments can violate your constitutional rights.
But I think you don’t understand the purpose of tire chalking- parking lots (private or public) generally don’t need to chalk tires. They either charge a flat fee for parking either all day or part of it or they charge a per hour fee. Private lots with a per hour fee don’t generally restrict the number of hours you can park except by their operating hours and they generally charge you by means of a ticket that gets punched with the time you enter and is read when you exit and many public lots work the same way.
Chalking is generally used for street parking or in public, metered lots with duration restrictions. Say there is a two hour restriction - a parking agent will mark all the cars at 10am and any marked cars that are still there after 12:00 noon will get a ticket. Why not just use meters? Because when parking is limited to 2 hours ,it’s limited to 2 hours and you don’t get an extension by running out to put more money in the meter.
Oddly, I haven’t seen this part of the decision mentioned anywhere
Every article says the court found the practice unconstitutional, when what actually happened was that the court found that the practice was a search that didn’t fall under the community caretaker exception and took no position whether it might fall under some other exception that the city had not argued. Which it may do in the further proceedings related to this case- because this was a decision granting an appeal of a dismissal , not a decision after a trial.
doreen, that’s really interesting. It seems like the judges aren’t even convinced that chalking tires couldn’t fit within the community caretaker exception, just that Saginaw failed to sufficiently argue to support its responsibilities. Perhaps the city lost the case solely because the it is a bad litigator or had bad lawyers.
The issue comes down to the fact that the 2012 GPS case was decided on the grounds of “the police didn’t have adequate justification to alter someone’s private property” rather than “the police didn’t have adequate justification to monitor someone’s comings and goings”. Since chalking is clearly another variety of the former action, the precedent applies, even if it seems a bit counterintuitive.
I recently learned that police have automated processes for locating stolen cars.
We had a recent officer shooting in LR. The news explained a plate scanner at a intersection automatically ran the plate (as the car drove by) and the system phoned a detective. Notifying him that the car was listed as stolen.
The detective monitored several cameras that tracked the car as it drove about a mile away. (footage was on the news). The detective called a patrol car in the area and it was waiting to intercept as the stolen car went by.
Unfortunately, the driver was armed and tried running the officer down with his car. That didn’t end well for the driver. I was amazed and intimidated at how sophisticated policing has become.
We’ve come a long way since chalking tires.
They’ve done this in some jurisdictions for a long time. Decades. Long before digital photography made taking pictures practical. Possibly before Polaroid photography, which would not have been cost effective.
For some reason, I remember an old Saturday Night Post feature called “You be the Judge” describing some court case, and letting you guess how the judge ruled. My grandmother had a lot of ancient Saturday Evening Posts which I used to browse through as a kid in the 1960s. One of those concerned some guy who had gotten a parking ticket based on his tire being chalked as evidence that he exceeded the time limit. He claimed that he had driven around the block and reparked in the meantime. The judge told him to pay the fine.
Reminds me of a parking ticket I got once.
My mother lives in the Zone 2 residential area in D.C., which has a 2-hour limit on nonresident parking. One year, I stopped by her house so that I could help her buy a Christmas tree and bring it back to the house. I was there for maybe 20-30 minutes when I stopped by to pick her up, then we drove out in my car, bought a tree, brought it back, and I was there for another hour or so afterwards to bring the tree inside, get it set up, put a couple of strings of lights on, and then relax before driving back home.
You know the punch line - I got a ticket. Not only had I been gone for 30-40 minutes during the middle of the time I’d supposedly been parked there the whole time, I hadn’t even parked on the same side of the street when I came back. But they ticketed me anyway.
Arguing with the DC parking enforcement bureaucracy is like arguing with a wall. I paid.
I don’t know what the rules are there, but I’ve been in cities where you’re not permitted to park for more than two hours (or whatever length of time) anywhere in that zone. So moving your car around isn’t acceptable. And with automatic license plate readers, it’s very possible for them to enforce such a restriction.
I’ll be interested to see how the other federal appeals courts rule on this issue, because you know that this decision will open the floodgates to a bunch of lawsuits in the other circuits. They might all reach similar conclusions, or we could end up with a circuit split, with the Supreme Court being asked to make the final decision.
People challenging this might want to be careful what they wish for. Plenty of commentators have pointed out that it’s now quite easy to read and/or take pictures of license plates. But that technology is more expensive than chalk. If jurisdictions that currently use chalk are forced to spend money on new technology to enforce parking restrictions, where do you think is the first place they will look to recoup that investment? I predict rather sudden inflation in the cost of a parking ticket.
With chalk, it would take a remarkable coincidence for both chalk marks to both end up back in the 6:00 position and aligned with the marks on the pavement. But with a photo, how do you prove that the car didn’t leave and come back? “I was dropping off my grandmother at her appointment, and I parked the car for 20 minutes so I could get out and help her into the building. Then, two hours later, I came by to pick her up, and parked again for another 20 minutes to help her out. The same parking spot was available both times, which was nice, because it was a very convenient spot.”
^ Location of the valve stems. Chalk marks can also be made on the street centered to the tires.
In the UK at least, there is a" no return in… " time. So, a spot might be 'One Hour Limit, No Return In Two Hours". In the above situation, you wouldn’t expect a ticket.
What this means is that the meter people have to time their walk pasts so that they can catch people who have parked too long, but not so long that they could have left and come back legally.
The U.S District Court’s Opinion:
In summary, the DC ruled the practice DID fall under the “Community Caretaking” exception to the Warrant requirement as the City argued.
The 6th Circuit reversed on Appeal and ruled it did NOT fall under the Caretaking function, and that assignment of error was sustained.
Not necessarily, private entities can also, of course the facts must be applicable, mainly concerning the 1st AM’s free speech provision.
Give one example of a truly private entity being found to violate someone’s Federal constitutional rights. And by “truly private” , I mean to exclude occasions where there is government involvement - private entities that are acting on behalf of the government ( such as a private organization that runs prisons ) or those that act under government duress ( a company punishes employees for their speech because a government entity threatens to punish the company if it doesn’t) or those where the company and the government are one and the same (possibly some company towns) .
Decisions since about 1980 regarding assembly and speech rights at shopping malls ( which I assume you are thinking of ) have been based on rights under state constitutions, not the Federal one. See here
I think it depends on very picky interpretation of the terminology involved. E.g., does your classic Southern lynching constitute violating someone’s Constitutional right to a fair trial? Seems like it to me. But then you go slippery slope: how many fewer people in the mob until it’s just plain old murder? So maybe not.
I’m aware of Pruneyard, the same with the Eastwood Mall case in Ohio concerning state Constitutions.
http://www.sconet.state.oh.us/rod/docs/pdf/0/1994/1994-ohio-433.pdf
Here is one example where there is NO government action or close nexus, citing Marsh v. Alabama.
There are others, although the government is not involved, there IS such a close nexus between the 2 that seemingly private behavior can be attributed to State Action.
I disagree that there is no government action or close nexus when the board of the corporation is appointed by elected officials.
What about Marsh as a PRIVATE town and the 1st AM ruling?
What about this one, where is the government nexus, (there is none), read Conclusion to speed up the reading or read it all.