Booting

Four states, four different answers

There is no national rule on wheel booting, the device clamped to a wheel that keeps a vehicle from being driven. Every state researched for this Course lands somewhere different, and the differences are not small.

Tennessee's 2024 MOTION Act criminally bans private-property booting outright, with a narrow exception for a licensed parking attendant. Texas takes the opposite approach: it licenses and regulates booting, requires 24 hours of posted warning signage before a boot is applied, and gives the booted driver a right to a hearing. California has no statute authorizing booting at all, and its Attorney General formally opined that it is unlawful without one.

"A private security firm, acting pursuant to a contract with a property owner, may not immobilize a vehicle that is impermissibly parked in a private parking lot by affixing a 'boot' device to the vehicle."

Source: California Attorney General Opinion No. 03-1204, California Attorney General

If your association is not in Tennessee, Texas, or California, do not assume any of these three rules applies to you. Check your own state's statute, or the absence of one.

A sign does not create legal authority

Boards commonly assume that posting a warning sign is what makes booting lawful. It is not. Signage is one piece of *how* a state that permits booting requires it to be done, it is never what grants the underlying authority to do it in the first place.

Where a state statute is silent, a county or city ordinance can fill the gap on its own, with its own separate signage rules.

"[i]n letters at least two (2) inches high that unauthorized vehicles will be immobilized or towed away and the owners expense"

Source: Miami-Dade County Code §30-479, Miami-Dade County

That ordinance exists precisely because Florida has no statewide booting statute. A sign that satisfies your neighboring county's ordinance may satisfy nothing where your own community sits.

What to check before your board considers booting

Before a booting policy goes anywhere near a board vote, someone needs to answer four questions with your state and county's actual current law, not a neighboring HOA's practice:

• Does your state permit private-property booting at all, ban it, or say nothing?
• If it is silent, does your county or city ordinance address it instead?
• Does the booting company need to be licensed, and does the driver get a right to a hearing or a fee cap?
• What does your own declaration actually authorize the board to enforce, and how?

Where booting is banned or legally uncertain, towing under the applicable state towing statute is usually the more consistently available enforcement tool. It has its own patchwork of rules, but far fewer states leave it entirely unaddressed.