A California appeals court has barred municipal government agencies from towing vehicles that have been the subject of multiple unpaid traffic tickets, provided the car is parked legally and is not causing a safety hazard.
The First Appellate District Court of Appeal decided July 21 in favor of the Coalition on Homelessness, which argued that the city and county of San Francisco and several of its agencies violated the state constitution and the U.S. Constitution’s Fourth Amendment by enforcing the towing of such vehicles without a warrant.
The appeals court, which reversed a trial court’s decision that sided with San Francisco officials, said the legal dispute hinged on whether such warrantless tows constituted what’s called a “vehicular community caretaking exception” to Fourth Amendment protections.
“... We reject respondents’ argument that their interest in deterring parking violations and nonpayment of parking fines justifies warrantless tows under the vehicular community caretaking exception,” the appeals court said.
In addition, such vehicle tows cannot be justified by equating them to warrantless civil asset forfeitures of property, according to the court’s opinion.
A spokeswoman for the office of San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu said the office is reviewing the details of the decision before deciding on its next moves.
“While our advocacy during oral arguments helped shape and narrow the final decision, we are disappointed by the overall decision and believe it further impedes the city’s ability to maintain safe and healthy streets,” Jen Kwart said in an email to the Northern California Record.
Two Pasadena-based Pacific Research Institute (PRI) fellows, Kerry Jackson and Wayne Winegarden, said the appeals court ruling will have an effect similar to California’s Prop. 57: de facto decriminalization and promoting anti-societal behavior. Jackson and Winegarden have authored several studies on homelessness in the state.
“Not towing vehicles in the name of compassion is an extension of the same mindset that is worsening California’s homeless problem,” the two researchers said in an email to the Record. “It uses victimization to undermine basic law and order and incentivizes unwanted behavior that will introduce new problems of parked and abandoned cars cluttering streets. This mindset also believes that putting ‘housing first’ will solve homelessness when the data shows that it does not.”
A better alternative would be to use the towing of cars with excessive parking tickets to encourage individuals to address underlying problems.
“This is the thinking behind the idea of homeless courts, an idea being pushed by Gov. (Gavin) Newsom and others,” the PRI fellows said. “The stick of a potential criminal penalty can be used as a carrot to push people into treatment in exchange for a clean slate and a fresh start.”
The appeals court also suggested that the U.S. Supreme Court may more clearly define exceptions to warrant requirements in property seizure cases in the future.