Bay City, Mich., is set to pay a woman $1,000 after marking her tires with chalk. A settlement was recently reached with the city’s Downtown Development Authority.
Police commonly use this practice to see if cars have stayed in the same spot for a certain amount of time, Newsweek explained.
However, U.S. District Judge Thomas Ludington ruled that chalking tires without a warrant actually violated constitutional protections against unreasonable searches regarding another case in Saginaw, Mich. In Bay City, plaintiff Jody Tyvela’s attorneys will also receive $59,000, CBS News reported.
“The whole point of this is to set clear lines,” attorney Phil Ellison said Thursday, according to the outlet. “Police just can’t kick down your door. The same parallel here is when the government starts messing with our cars.”
Ludington said tire marking practice was unconstitutional after the attorney “won key decisions at a federal appeals court whose opinions cover Michigan, Ohio, Tennessee and Kentucky,” per CBS.
In Bay City, Tyvela was hit with chalk marking-based tickets six times in 2016 and 2017. Police used the chalk to determine how long people parked in downtown Bay City where there are no parking meters.
Others have also become frustrated with tire chalking. Earlier this year, a man on TikTok was dubbed a “hero” for washing chalk off his neighbors’ cars. However, another court ruling regarding a San Diego case said that tire marking did not violate the fourth amendment.
CBS has requested comment from Bay City officials as of Thursday.
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