Students
v.
Parking Enforcement
75 U.Va 13 (2022)
KULKARNI, J. delivers the opinion of the court.
In the history of this vaunted paper, we have played as the chief dispute mechanism for many petty complaints—issues between individual students, student groups, and even entire class years. But there has always been exactly one group that has found itself on the wrong end of us, the Court of Petty Appeals. That group? The parking enforcement of the University of Virginia. All students, staff, and administration are familiar with this organization. They charge exorbitant annual fees for parking passes and are quick to hand out parking tickets for the shortest of violations. For the simple act of attending the Law School from anywhere not named Pav or Ivy, students are punished with having to pay a surcharge. This has effectively created two classes of students: those who have to interact with parking enforcement on a daily basis and those who do not. It is not surprising, therefore, that today we are faced with yet another cause of action against this parking enforcement. Petitioners consist of administration, staff, and students who filed a complaint alleging that parking enforcement improperly issued parking tickets over the holiday break.
To begin with, we acknowledge the fact the Law School and University writ large have outsourced parking enforcement. This organization has full authority to enforce their own regulations and charge incredibly high fees for the smallest of parking violations. During the school year, this can include parking in the D3 lot when a person has no pass, parking in the D2 lot with no pass, and, the most heinous of all, parking in the D2 lot when the student has only purchased a pass to park in the D3 lot. This parking enforcement is ruthless, requiring everyone to park precisely in the lot they paid for and no further. For those who take exception, they can either pay a daily rate or risk a ticket. Even further, those paid spots in the D2 lot are in fact controlled by the same organization that runs parking throughout the city (ParkMobile)—a surprise that such an organization is allowed such access to the Law School. The brave rebels who choose to risk a ticket do so to stand up against the authoritarian organization that dictates their lives. Regardless of how this Court feels emotionally about such students, it is the truth that the administration has allowed parking enforcement to set their own policies and enforce them. Despite how broad our mandate is on this Court, the case at bar is not about the overall existence of parking enforcement.
Today, we are focused on the issuance of parking tickets during the holiday break. And this decision is an easy one for us. Parking enforcement went against all norms of decency by issuing tickets during this period. Anyone taking the chance to enter the Law School during the break is doing so briefly and to complete an important task. The holidays are intended to be a time of rest and recovery. The students who have to take a trip into the Law School do so not out of any personal desire but to retrieve items left in lockers or to pick up their incredibly expensive textbooks. Student organization leaders are stopping by to get started on their efforts to improve the student experience.
There is not a gunner in the world who would make the trek to the Law School for their intense work during the break.[1] Therefore, the actions of parking enforcement go beyond the pale of common decency. But the law is not a demonstration of emotion but of policies. Parking enforcement exists as part of a University system. During the holidays, the University system is shut down. Thankfully, even the staff and administration are technically given the holidays off to recover from the screaming children on Main Grounds and tired graduate students on North Grounds. The boldness of issuing tickets over break to students who make the trek to the Law School over the holidays should be derided. Despite the respondents’ claim that the students need to take mitigating actions and park elsewhere and walk to the school, mitigation is only necessary where it would reasonably solve the problem at a low cost. Over break, there was a high cost to such an action—the intense cold.
Therefore, parking enforcement should no longer have the authority to issue tickets over the break if the very University they are working with is offline. This policy is similar to parking enforcement’s behavior of not enforcing their own regulations during the first month of the academic year. At that time, they find it in the kindness of their own hearts to allow students the ability to buy their prohibitively expensive parking passes before charging them. Therein lies the solution to the most recent offense by parking enforcement. As they do each August, parking enforcement should not enforce “violations” between the end of fall finals and the start of spring classes. In addition, they should provide the opportunity to buy semester-long parking passes and allow for a second buy period in the spring. In this vein, the Court of Petty of Appeals issues an injunction to parking enforcement—they lose their ability to issue any tickets until they change this system.
MORSE, J. concurring.
I join my esteemed colleague, Justice Kulkarni, to address one of the most pernicious and extractive practices condoned by the law school: charging tuition just below the median household income in the states of Virginia[1] AND charging students to park in lots which are clearly nowhere near capacity. The lack of even a facially-plausible justification for charging parking based on a limited supply of parking spaces is particularly galling. [2] I write separately because I myself was the unfortunate recipient of a parking ticket received over winter break and I am not a gunner. I was, like many students, participating in the Trial Advocacy College which is an excellent source of two pass-fail credits and a wonderful educational experience to boot. If this school will not refrain from charging its students for unused parking spots, the least it could do is not charge students who are here taking J-term classes instead of enjoying their full winter break. And this Court should order my ticket void.
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omk6cg@virginia.edu
cpg9jy@virginia.edu
[1] I know personally. I asked Julia Grant ’23, my closest friend and noted gunner, if she or any of her gunner comrades had decided to enter the library over break. Thankfully, she said no.