COLUMBUS, Ohio -- The state Supreme Court gave a green light Thursday to cities that use traffic cameras to catch and fine drivers who break traffic laws.
In its unanimous decision, the court ruled that cities using the devices, often referred to as "red-light cameras," do not exceed the authority to make local ordinances given to them under the state's constitution.
The court, however, did acknowledge that use of the cameras to issue civil citations to an offending vehicle's owner raises questions regarding an individual's constitutional rights that could be examined in a future case.
Kelly Mendenhall and other Akron-area motorists had challenged their citations, arguing that a local government's decision to punish traffic violations with civil penalties when cameras are used conflicted with state laws defining speeding and traffic-light violations as criminal offenses.
Writing the Ohio Supreme Court's 7-0 opinion, Justice Judith Ann Lanzinger ruled that local traffic law enforcement using cameras and civil penalties did not conflict with state law.
"When a municipal ordinance does nothing more than prohibit the same conduct prohibited by state statute, there is no conflict between the two," Lanzinger wrote.
Lanzinger noted that those ticketed by police officers are subject to the usual traffic laws. The cameras and fines are used only when police officers are not present.
"The city ordinance and state law may target identical conduct - speeding - but the city ordinance does not replace traffic law. It merely supplements it," she wrote.
Lanzinger noted that this ruling only satisfied the question of whether the use of the automated traffic enforcement system exceeded the home rule powers given to Ohio local governments. She said there had been other constitutional questions raised by the Akron ordinance and others like it, but that question was not before the court at this time.
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