Gfactor
December 6, 2005, 3:06pm
41
Here is an article that talks about pay toilets and their legality: Gotham Gazette -- Public Toilets
Here is the New York statute that outlaws pay toilets:
§ 399-a. Pay toilets; prohibition. 1. On and after September first,
http://public.leginfo.state.ny.us/menugetf.cgi?COMMONQUERY=LAWS
Wikipedia has this to say:
Pay toilets are almost unknown in the United States. A campaign by the Committee to End Pay Toilets In America (CEPTIA) resulted in laws against pay toilets being enacted in a number of cities and states in the mid-1970s. Around that time, most restroom owners found they were losing more money due to stolen pay boxes than they made.
A pay toilet is a public toilet that requires the user to pay. It may be street furniture or be inside a building, e.g. a shopping mall, department store, or railway station. The reason for charging money is usually for the maintenance of the equipment. Paying to use a toilet can be traced back almost 2000 years, to the first century BCE. The charge is often collected by an attendant or by inserting coins into an automatic turnstile; in some freestanding toilets in the street, the fee is inserted...
And here is a rambling Google Answer about the disappearance of pay toilets: Google Answers: Whatever happened to pay toilets? -for politicalguru-ga
Gfactor
December 6, 2005, 3:12pm
42
And as others have said, no, the Supreme Court has not ruled pay toilets unconstitutional. As the other links I posted show, pay toilets remain in the US.