Ryan O’Donnell’s parking problem added up to about $524: two tickets for an expired meter and one for overstaying a time limit. Chicago’s answer was to tow his car, impound it, and sell it at scrap value, $273, to URT United Road Towing, the private company that tows for the city. According to the federal appeals court that upheld the arrangement, the city did not use any of that money to pay down his tickets.
On Monday, Oct. 19, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to take up his challenge, O’Donnell v. City of Chicago, No. 25-1098. The denial came with a statement from Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justice Neil Gorsuch, that reads less like a shrug and more like an instruction sheet for the next lawsuit.
“In Chicago, a driver who fails to pay as few as two parking tickets risks forfeiting his vehicle to the city,” the statement opens. It goes on to say that the police-power reasoning Chicago relies on “may be insufficient to avoid the requirement of just compensation” under the Fifth Amendment.
The other plaintiff never got a ticket
O’Donnell’s co-plaintiff, Michael Goree, had no ticket debt at all. Someone who co-signed on his car had about $560 in unpaid tickets, run up on a different vehicle. Because Chicago’s ordinance reaches every vehicle registered to a delinquent owner, the city towed and impounded Goree’s car anyway, then handed it over to the lienholder, according to the Sotomayor statement and the Seventh Circuit’s opinion…