San Diego Illegally ‘Tags’ Parked Cars With Chalk, Class Action Says

America’s Finest City, along with the San Diego Police Department, have been hit with a class action lawsuit alleging cars are illegally marked with chalk to enforce parking ordinances.

After a recent 6th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling declaring it unconstitutional to chalk tires in Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee, California residents have taken the dispute to San Diego.

In the recent San Diego class action lawsuit, lead plaintiffs allege that parking enforcement officials violate both the U.S. and California Constitutions by illegally marking or tagging vehicles.

“Each day, each week and each month, citizens living in cities, counties and municipalities throughout the State of California receive parking tickets. These tickets are generally given to citizens lawfully,” notes the San Diego parking class action lawsuit. “However, the enforcement and operation of parking enforcement has been taken a step further, in actions that violate protections provided by the U.S. and California Constitutions – specifically protections provided under the 4th Amendment of the United States Constitution and Article I, of the California State Constitution.”

According to the San Diego class action, parking enforcement officials use chalk to mark a vehicle while it is legally parked, i.e., the driver has purchased a permit, paid a meter, or parked within the time allowed. The act of marking a legally parked car violates the car owner’s rights when it is done without a warrant, argue the plaintiffs.

“Local government entities engaging in these unconstitutional acts have collected enormous amounts of penalties and fines,” claims the San Diego parking class action lawsuit. “In fact, these government entities have denied numerous parking ticket ‘appeals’ and doubled, if not tripled fine amounts when the penalty or fine is not paid; all on the basis of violating a citizen’s constitutional rights and without any legal authority to do so.”

The two plaintiffs say that they each have been subject to fines for alleged parking violations in San Diego and have even had their cars impounded over parking tickets. They say that they witnessed San Diego parking enforcement officers putting chalk on their tires to “surreptitiously” monitor their parking and support the eventual assessment of a ticket and fine.

“Defendants and their employees and agents violated Plaintiffs …and Class Member’s Fourth Amendment rights to be free from unreasonable search and seizure of their property by marking their vehicles with chalk for the purposes of law enforcement,” alleges the San Diego parking class action lawsuit.

The plaintiffs seek to represent a Class of Californians who have been subject to parking tickets, fines, and other penalties issued by the allegedly unconstitutional chalking of their vehicles’ tires by San Diego parking enforcement.

They are seeking a temporary restraining order to stop the police department from using chalk marks as a part of parking enforcement, along with a permanent injunction and damages.

The San Diego parking class action lawsuit follows in the footsteps of a Michigan woman who alleged that her Constitutional rights were violated by the use of chalk to mark her tires – resulting in 15 parking tickets. The Michigan plaintiff argued that the parking enforcement officials who marked her car had no reasonable suspicion to do so and lacked probable cause.

The San Diego plaintiffs are represented by Ramin R. Hariri of the Hariri Law Group, and Daryoosh Khashayar and Taylor Marks of the Khashayar Law Group.

The San Diego Parking Tickets Class Action Lawsuit is Verdun, et al. v. City of San Diego, et al., Case No. 3:19-cv-00839-AJB-WVG, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California.

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