3rd District Court Of Appeals Backs City Of Aventura In Red-Light Camera Fight
TALLAHASSEE (CBSMiami/NSF) -- A panel of the 3rd District Court of Appeal on Wednesday overturned a Miami-Dade County judge's ruling against the city of Aventura in a dispute that stemmed from motorist Lee Stein receiving a citation for failing to stop at a red light in 2014.
The case focused on guidelines used by Aventura in deciding whether to cite motorists based on red-light camera images. Aventura and other cities have different guidelines, leading Stein to argue, in part, that Aventura violated a state requirement of uniform traffic laws.
The appeals court, in an 18-page decision, rejected the arguments, saying the different guidelines "essentially reflect a commitment of different levels of police resources and therefore different levels of local enforcement."
"The local conditions that shape local enforcement decisions change not only from city to city but also from time to time within a city," said the ruling, written by Judge Thomas Logue and joined by judges Vance Salter and Monica Gordo. "We know of no law, and Stein has cited to none, that holds such a local variation in traffic enforcement is a defense to a traffic citation."
State lawmakers in 2010 passed a measure that cleared the way for local governments to use cameras to help catch red-light runners. But the cameras have sparked long-running legal and political fights, including about the roles of private companies hired by local governments to help carry out the programs.
Aventura has been a focus of the legal battles, with the Florida Supreme Court in 2018 ruling that Aventura could use a contractor to review images of potential red-light violations --- so long as a city officer makes the ultimate decision about whether motorists are ticketed.
The Stein case also has involved the interplay between Aventura and a contractor, American Traffic Solutions, Inc. The city provided the disputed guidelines to American Traffic Solutions to sort red-light camera images into different databases, with a city officer then able to review images and determine whether probable cause exists to cite motorists.
Stein took issue, for example, with a guideline known as a "line of demarcation," which involves the boundaries of an intersection. Stein presented evidence that Aventura and 13 other Miami-Dade County cities instructed contractors to use the "stop line" on roads when evaluating images, while two other cities had different guidelines, such as looking at areas behind crosswalks as an intersection boundary.
The county judge sided with Stein, finding that the guidelines were "akin" to ordinances that delineated "what is or is not a violation of state statues regarding right turns on red," the appeals court ruling said. The county judge said such ordinances violate the state's requirement of uniform traffic laws.
But the appeals court disagreed, saying a state law "recognizes there will be different levels of local traffic enforcement."
"(The) guidelines are instructions each city gives its red light vendor regarding the contractual task of sorting camera images: they do not define traffic violations and are not traffic laws that apply to the driving public," the ruling said. "The variations in levels of red light traffic enforcement that result from different guidelines do not violate the requirement that traffic laws be uniform."
(©2020 CBS Local Media. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The News Service of Florida's Jim Saunders contributed to this report.)
