Nahmod Law

Do you park your car in public spaces?

The Sixth Circuit’s Fourth Amendment tire-chalking decision in Taylor v. City of Saginow, 922 F.3d 328 (6^th Cir. 2019) is an interesting one, especially if you drive a car and sometimes park it in public parking spaces (and who doesn’t?). After Taylor, you may be able to make a federal case out of getting a ticket if your car’s tires were chalked.

The facts and reasoning in Taylor v. City of Saginow

In Taylor, the Sixth Circuit ruled that an officer’s use of chalk to mark the tires of the plaintiff’s parked car (without consent or a valid search warrant) in order to track how long it had been parked (a common parking enforcement practice) was a search subject to the Fourth Amendment. Canvassing Supreme Court reasoning in Fourth Amendment cases, the court first found that tire chalking was not a search under the reasonable expectation of privacy approach.

In contrast, however, the court reasoned that under the approach of U.S. v. Jones, 565 U.S. 400 (2012), chalking was a common law trespass and thus was a search that implicated the Fourth Amendment. It then determined that the two exceptions to the warrant requirement—community caretaking and motor vehicle—did not apply, at least at the pleading stage of this section 1983 Fourth Amendment litigation. Consequently, the chalking of the plaintiff’s car without a warrant, followed by a parking ticket, violated the Fourth Amendment.

The community caretaking exception

The Supreme Court articulated the community caretaking exception to the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement in Cady v. Dombrowski, 413 U.S. 433, 441 (1973), where it upheld the warrantless search by police officers of a disabled vehicle when they reasonably believed that the vehicle could be vandalized and that its trunk contained a gun. The Court explained that police officers often engage in such “community caretaking functions, totally divorced from the detection, investigation, or acquisition of evidence relating to the violation of a criminal statute.” In Taylor, the Sixth Circuit reasoned that tire chalking was indeed related to the detection and acquisition of evidence relating to the violation of a criminal statute, with the result that the exception did not apply.

Comments

Taylor involved section 1983 damages claims against the city and an officer who raised qualified immunity, with the Sixth Circuit reversing the dismissal of plaintiff’s complaint for failure to state a claim. I would guess that the officer will eventually prevail on qualified immunity grounds because of the absence of clearly settled Fourth Amendment law at the time of the challenged conduct. Going forward, of course, Fourth Amendment law on this issue is indeed clearly settled, at least in the Sixth Circuit.

However, qualified immunity will not apply to protect the city, which could be liable if, as it likely, its (or the police department’s) official policy or custom brought about the Fourth Amendment violation. The extent of recoverable damages is another question, though, so I would guess that this case will settle, if it has not already done so.

You may be interested to know that the First Circuit, in Caniglia v. Strom, 953 F.3d 112 (1^st Cir. 2010), discussed the scope of the community caretaking exception in a case involving a warrantless entry into the home. It ruled as a matter of first impression in its circuit that the exception “extends to police officers performing community caretaking functions on private premises (including homes).”

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