Supreme Court won't take up Chicago parking ticket lawsuit despite two justices' "serious concerns" about vehicle seizures

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to take up a lawsuit challenging a Chicago ordinance allowing the city to seize a car owner's vehicles over unpaid parking tickets, even other cars not involved in any parking violations, despite justices expressing "serious concerns" about the policy.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justice Neil Gorsuch, wrote that the city's vehicle impoundment policy might violate the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment, but said the issue needs more discussion in lower courts before the nation's highest court steps in.

In Chicago, the city can boot, impound, and eventually sell off any vehicle belonging to someone who has as little as two parking tickets that have gone unpaid for more than a year, even if that car is not the one involved in the parking infraction.

"Chicago's vehicle-forfeiture scheme is vast and lucrative, helping the city generate, according to one estimate, $264 million in traffic-ticket revenue," Sotomayor wrote in Monday's ruling.

Two Chicago drivers had filed a class-action lawsuit against the city, asking to have the city's vehicle seizure policy declared unconstitutional, but so far, lower courts and appeals courts have ruled against them.

Ryan O'Donnell was unable to pay $524 he owed for three parking tickets, and after his car was booted and towed away in 2021, the city sold it for scrap for $273. Michael Goree had his Chevrolet booted and towed away in 2018 after the co-signor on his car loan racked up unpaid tickets on another vehicle. His car was eventually turned over to the lienholder, which sold it off without compensating Goree for the loss of his car.

O'Donnell and Goree filed a class-action lawsuit against the city, claiming its vehicle impoundment rules violate the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment, which prohibits the government from seizing private without "just compensation."

City attorneys have argued Chicago's vehicle impoundment rules are exempt from the Takings Clause, because they serve a punitive function in an effort to enforce parking laws.

In September 2024, a federal judge in Chicago threw out their lawsuit, and in December 2025, the Chicago-based 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that "immobilizing, towing, impounding and — if necessary — disposing of vehicles" under the city's municipal code "is an exercise of the city's police power to enforce its traffic code and thus isn't a taking."

On Monday, a majority of the Supreme Court declined to take up an appeal of that ruling, but in doing so, Sotomayor and Gorsuch expressed doubts about the constitutionality of the city's vehicle impoundment rules.

Sotomayor suggested that the 7th Circuit's ruling might have been mistaken, writing that features of the city's municipal code "strongly suggest that 'the purpose of vehicle impoundments' under Chicago's scheme 'is to collect a debt, not enforce public safety laws.'"

Specifically, Sotomayor noted that the city's rules allow it to seize someone's car even if it is not involved in any parking infractions, when the owner has unpaid parking tickets for a different vehicle.

However, Sotomayor noted that lower courts are still hashing out whether the city's police powers are exempt from the Takings Clause.

"Such questions thus continue to 'benefit from further percolation' in the lower courts before this Court chooses to intervene," she wrote.

Sotomayor urged lower courts considering other challenges to the city's vehicle impoundment roles to "carefully and narrowly define the circumstances in which the State's exercise of its police powers are held exempt from the just compensation requirement, as well as explain the source of any such exemption."

"I again encourage courts considering this issue to take care that due deference to state police powers does not eclipse constitutional rights," she added.