Chicago wants to know where the food trucks it licenses to operate on city streets are. So it conditions the approval of a license on the operator installing a GPS device on the vehicle.
In LMP Services, Inc. v. City of Chicago, No. 123123 (May 23, 2019), a case decided by the Illinois Supreme Court, the “[p]laintiff contends that the requirement that it install a GPS unit in its food truck and transmit its location to a service provider constitutes a warrantless search in violation of the Illinois Constitution.” Slip op. at 11.
The court disagreed: food trucks are a highly-regulated business, and the government has a “substantial interest” in the ability to know where they are. You have to know where they are in order to inspect them, just like “brick and mortar” restaurants.
What about that case in which the U.S. Supreme Court held it was a “search” when law enforcement attached a GPS device to a suspect’s car, United States v. Jones, 565 U.S. 400 (2012)? Not the same, held the LMP court. First, this isn’t a criminal matter, but the licensing of a business on city streets. Second, the GPS on the food truck “does not transmit the food truck’s location data directly to the City, nor does plaintiff allege that the City has ever obtained plaintiff’s location data from its private service provider without obtaining a warrant.” Slip op. at 12. Besides, one of the hallmark of food truck marketing is telling your diners where you are today.
For those of you interested in property rights in these situations, check out the recent Sixth Circuit opinion in Taylor v. City of Sagniaw, No. 17-2126 (6th Cir. Apr. 22, 2019), where a three-judge panel of that court concluded that a parking officer’s chalk marking of a car’s tires to gather evidence of a $15 violation of the parking ordinance was a “search” because it is a physical intrusion in a constitutionally protected area, cojoined with an attempt to gather information.
We will finish off this post with a takings angle: we often hear that federal courts are not interested in serving as “super zoning boards of appeals,” and adjudicating federal constitutional issues are simply beneath Article III judges when something as “local” as land use law is involved. But in the Taylor case the court had no problem dealing with a $15 parking ticket, because it involved important constitutional property rights. Take that, Williamson County.
LMP Services, Inc. v. City of Chicago, No. 123123 (Ill. May 23, 2019)