By Jay Landers

A Florida plaintiff who has set his sights on the parking industry recently dismissed ParkMobile and PayByPhone from his ongoing litigation against six South Florida municipalities and the parking management company One Parking.

In early March, Kerry Lutz, a retired attorney and a resident of Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida against the Town of Palm Beach, the City of Boca Raton, the City of West Palm Beach, the City of Riviera Beach, the City of Delray Beach, and the City of Fort Lauderdale. In addition to One Parking, the suit known as Kerry Lutz v. Town of Palm Beach, et al. also named the parking payment platforms ParkMobile and PayByPhone.

In essence, the lawsuit disputes the constitutionality of certain parking enforcement and payment practices of the local governments and the companies and asserts other violations of federal and state laws by one or more of the cities and companies.

‘No lawful basis’

In his lawsuit, Lutz asserts that the on-street parking enforcement practices of the local governments constitute a violation of due process under the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution because they rely on signage that does not adhere to federal requirements for traffic control devices detailed in the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD) for Streets and Highways.

Published by the U.S. Federal Highway Administration, the MUTCD establishes uniform national criteria for traffic control devices used on streets, highways, and similar facilities. The manual includes a section titled “Parking, Standing, Stopping, and Emergency Restriction Signs” that details requirements for the design and placement of such signs. In his amended complaint, Lutz asserts that the parking signage of each of the six municipalities fails to comply with various requirements of the MUTCD, including those related to color, height, orientation, format, fonts, and non-reflective materials.

Because the State of Florida has adopted the MUTCD as the state standard for all traffic control devices, parking signs deployed by public entities must adhere to the manual’s requirements, Lutz maintains in his first amended complaint that was filed on April 23. Failure to do so invalidates the parking enforcement activities of the municipalities, Lutz asserts. “Adequate notice by a lawful traffic control device is a constitutional prerequisite to parking enforcement,” according to the amended complaint.

“Every parking citation issued by every Defendant municipality rests on a void foundation: no lawful traffic control device existed at the point of enforcement,” the amended complaint states. “No valid sign means no valid regulation means no lawful basis for citation or payment demand.”

‘App-only coercion’

Lutz, who is representing himself, maintains that Riviera Beach and Delray Beach have unconstitutionally delegated police power functions of government by hiring One Parking to manage citation issuance, payment collection, enforcement, and adjudication. This arrangement violates Section 316.640 of the Florida Statutes and its requirement that municipalities employ parking enforcement officers who have undergone state-approved training and operate under the direction of the city’s police department, according to the amended complaint.

Lutz also takes aim at Palm Beach and Fort Lauderdale for engaging in what the amended complaint describes as “app-only coercion.” Palm Beach “has completely eliminated kiosks and cash payment options,” requiring payment via the ParkMobile app, the amended complaint states. This requirement violates the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment by conditioning “use of a public street on possession of a smartphone or enrollment in a private application without a rational basis and a consent-neutral alternative,” according to the amended complaint.

Although Fort Lauderdale has retained payment kiosks in high-traffic tourist areas, the city requires use of the PayByPhone app in non-tourist residential and commercial areas, according to the amended complaint. “The selective retention of kiosks in tourist areas constitutes a discriminatory classification between visitors — who receive cash options — and residents of non-tourist areas who do not,” the complaint states.

Meanwhile, the lawsuit maintains that West Palm Beach is in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) for failing to deploy MUTCD-compliant parking signage adjacent to the Paul G. Rogers Federal Courthouse. “No ADA-compliant signage identifies accessible parking spaces, accessible payment options, or accessible routes,” the amended complaint states.

Data handling concerns

The complaint also targets the data handling practices of ParkMobile, PayByPhone, and One Parking. The companies “collect, process, and retain from every transaction: full name; email address; telephone number; license plate number; geolocation data for each parking session; IP address; device identifiers; payment data; usage metadata; and behavioral profile data derived from parking patterns,” according to the amended complaint.

In cases where parking payments must be made by app, drivers have “no choice but to submit to this data regime or receive a citation, face towing, or risk vehicle immobilization,” the amended complaint states. “Consent obtained under such conditions is not freely given and is legally invalid under the Florida Digital Bill of Rights.” The law, which took effect in July 2024, imposes data privacy requirements on businesses operating in the state or providing products or services to Florida residents.

The lawsuit also alleges that the ParkMobile and PayByPhone apps “contain no age verification mechanism, no parental consent requirement, and no technical control preventing underage registration,” according to the amended complaint. However, use of the apps by minors leads to legal complications for the companies, Lutz maintains.

“Contracts with minors are void or voidable under Florida law,” the amended complaint asserts. “A municipality that mandates app use as the sole payment option is compelling minors into void contracts as a condition of using a public street. Each such transaction constitutes an independent legal violation.”

Requests for the court

Lutz is asking the court to prevent the six municipalities from enforcing parking requirements, issuing citations, or collecting related fees until they deploy parking signage that complies with MUTCD requirements and make consent-neutral payment options available. Each of the municipalities either declined to comment or did not respond to requests for comment for this story.

In addition, Lutz wants the court to prevent Riviera Beach and Delray from delegating citation issuance, enforcement, and adjudication to One Parking or other private for-profit groups. In early June, Riviera Beach officials temporarily suspended the city’s paid parking program amid complaints from residents and businesses, according to a June 10 report by the local NBC station WPTV. One Parking did not respond to requests for comment for this story.

Finally, Lutz calls on the court to enjoin ParkMobile and PayByPhone “from operating in Florida municipalities that have eliminated cash and kiosk alternatives until age verification and parental consent mechanisms are implemented,” according to the amended complaint. Both companies declined to comment for this story.

However, this last request is effectively moot now that ParkMobile and PayByPhone were dismissed from the case without prejudice on June 23, at the request of Lutz. Their dismissal was “purely strategic,” Lutz told Parking Today. “I don’t want to get into the strategy, but I basically felt the case was better concentrating on the municipal defendants and One Parking.”

U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon, who is overseeing the case, has instructed the defendants to hold off on submitting responses to the amended complaint until all parties in the case have been served. Cannon set a deadline of July 22 for Lutz to file proof of having served the remaining defendants.

In mid-April, Cannon dismissed Lutz’s original complaint without prejudice, ruling on her own review that it was an impermissible “shotgun pleading” that failed to specify which claims applied to which defendants. The dismissal did not address the merits of Lutz’s claims, and he filed his amended complaint within the court’s deadline.

‘Multi-front system’

The lawsuit is one part of what Lutz described as a “multi-front system to reform the parking system in the United States.” He is also the author of the recently published book “America’s Great Parking Scam: You’ve Been Robbed.” According to its description on Amazon.com, the book “pulls back the curtain on how cities and private tech companies quietly replaced lawful notice with a coercive, app-driven extraction machine.”

In this same vein, Lutz also recently founded the National Association of American Defrauded Parkers (NAADP), a consumer advocacy association that offers its members a “Parking Ticket Self Defense Kit,” according to Lutz’s website, www.parkscam.com.

“My end goal is, I want to see what I believe to be a sense of lawlessness in our municipalities and overreach ended,” Lutz said.

JAY LANDERS is the editor-in-chief of Parking Today. He can be reached at [email protected].