NPR-

The case was brought by Alison Taylor, a Michigan woman whom the court describes as a “frequent recipient of parking tickets.” The city of Saginaw, Mich., like countless other cities around the country, uses chalk to mark the tires of cars to enforce time limits on parking.

By the time Taylor received her 15th citation in just a few years, she decided to go after the city — and specifically after parking enforcement officer Tabitha Hoskins.

Hoskins, Taylor alleged in her lawsuit, was a “prolific” chalker. Every single one of Taylor’s 15 tickets was issued by Hoskins after she marked a tire with chalk, and then circled back to see if Taylor’s car had moved. That chalking, Taylor argued, was unconstitutional.

“Trespassing upon a privately-owned vehicle parked on a public street to place a chalk mark to begin gathering information to ultimately impose a government sanction is unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment,” Taylor’s lawyer, Philip Ellison, wrote in a court filing.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit unanimously agreed. Chalking tires is a kind of trespass, Judge Bernice Donald wrote for the panel, and it requires a warrant. The decision affects the 6th Circuit, which includes Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee.

The Fourth Amendment protects people from “unreasonable searches and seizures.” To determine whether a violation has occurred, the court first asks whether the government’s conduct counts as a search; if so, it asks whether the search was reasonable.

The court found that chalking is indeed a “search” for purposes of the Fourth Amendment, because government officials physically trespass upon a constitutionally protected area to obtain information. Just as the Supreme Court ruled in 2012 that sticking a GPS tracker to a car counted as a “search,” so is marking a tire with chalk to figure out how long it has been parked, the court wrote.

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