"The city has significant interests that are furthered by enforcing its parking ordinances through the use of chalk, and these interests greatly outweigh the minimal intrusion that a chalk mark creates," Saginaw — which generates around $200k per year from such tickets —had argued in its filing.
The District Court had previously ruled that the"search in question involved taking nothing from the vehicle and, in fact, doing no permanent damage at all"; thus the search was reasonable and therefore lawful. But the Appeals Court overturned that decision on Wednesday; if Saginaw does not appeal in turn, the decision would stand and would open the door for the lawsuit to be turned into a class action for every driver who received a tire chalk ticket in the city in the past seven years — and there are thousands. The statute of limitations goes back three years before court proceedings started, to 2014.
While decisions made by the 6th Circuit also set legal precedent across all of Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee, one of the judges admitted that not everybody is equally effected by the ruling. "I haven't gotten many parking tickets," Judge Joan Larsen said,"Only because I have a reserved parking spot."