City Attorney Mara W. Elliott Thursday announced that the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld San Diego's longstanding practice of chalking tires to enforce time limits in parking spaces on city streets.
In a split 2-1 decision, the panel voted that the dusting of chalk on a tire does not constitutes a "search" under the Fourth Amendment. Plaintiffs argued chalking tires is an intrusion on personal liberty and falls within the amendment's administrative search exception.
"San Diego has chalked tires as an effective, cost-efficient, and accurate means of parking enforcement for nearly 100 years," Elliott said. "The court was correct in determining that chalking a tire does not represent an illegal search and in rejecting the plaintiffs unsupported, revisionist account of Fourth Amendment doctrine."
