Thousands in Miami-Dade may be on hook for red-light camera tickets after court ruling

Thousands of Miami-Dade motorists might be on the hook for hefty fines from red-light camera tickets after a state appeals court Wednesday found that different guidelines for enforcement in more than a dozen cities do not violate the requirement that Florida’s traffic laws be uniform.

A three-judge panel ruled in favor of the city of Aventura and against a motorist who contested his ticket, arguing that the mishmash of enforcement procedures did not comply with Florida law. His argument was adopted by Miami-Dade County Judge Steven Leifman in 2018, a ruling that had largely left red-light tickets in legal limbo and led to the appellate review.

Technically, the ruling by the Third District Court of Appeal’s panel means that Aventura and other cities in Miami-Dade can move forward with collecting fines from thousands of red-light camera violators in recent years. But that effort might depend on the outcome of a likely appeal that looks headed for the Florida Supreme Court.

Attorney Louis Arslanian, of Miami’s Ticket Clinic firm, said he plans to ask the three-judge panel to reconsider its opinion and for the full appellate court to review the matter if necessary.

“I completely disagree with this decision,” Arslanian told the Miami Herald. “When you have that many cities making different rules, it’s not uniform under state law. It’s one line here and another line there. It’s one speed limit here and another speed limit there.”

In Aventura, for example, you’ll get a ticket if a traffic camera catches you making a right turn on a red light at 15 miles per hour. In Key Biscayne, the threshold is 25 mph. But over in West Miami, you’ll get cited if you turn at only 10 mph.

The red-light camera citations carry a $158 civil fine. But if they are not paid, they can become state traffic tickets that carry heavier fines, points on your driving record and higher insurance costs.

On Wednesday, Aventura’s lawyer, Ed Guedes, praised the three-judge panel’s appellate ruling, saying it means the red-light camera programs are “conclusively and unambiguously lawful under state law.”

Guedes said the Ticket Clinic, which had challenged Aventura’s guidelines in a case on behalf of motorist Lee Stein, filed close to 10,000 motions to dismiss red-light camera tickets — requests that have been on hold for nearly two years. He said those cases must now proceed in court.

“Every one of those motions should be denied,” Guedes said.

In its ruling, the three-judge appellate panel found that Aventura and other cities each give red-light camera vendors guidelines, but they “do not define traffic violations and are not traffic laws that apply to the driving public.”

“The variations in levels of red light traffic enforcement that result from different guidelines do not violate the requirement that local traffic laws be uniform,” wrote Thomas Logue, one of the three judges on the appellate panel.

The panel concluded that state laws recognize there are “different levels of local traffic enforcement,” leaving it up to each city to decide “whether, where and how to deploy red light cameras.”

“In the final analysis, the fact that other violators in other cities may not receive citations is ‘not a matter about which those cited for a violation have authority to complain,’ “ Logue wrote, noting a previous red-light camera opinion.

The latest appellate ruling follows another prior challenge to the decade-old red-light camera law.

In a 2018 opinion, the state Supreme Court ruled that local governments can still use red-light cameras operated by private companies to catch traffic violators. In that case, a motorist named Luis Jimenez argued that Aventura’s red-light program was unlawful because it gave the private vendor too much authority to review video and images of traffic violations.

The Supreme Court justices disagreed, ruling that state laws allow for those companies to forward the images to trained police officers who ultimately make the decision on whether to issue a traffic citation.

In Wednesday’s appellate ruling in Miami-Dade, the three-judge panel noted that Aventura’s guidelines are “instructions” and that ultimately the images of red-light violators are reviewed by police officers to determine probable cause of a traffic infraction.

Since the red-light camera law’s inception, supporters of the cameras say they improve traffic safety but critics counter that they amount to a money grab by local governments and their camera vendors.

This story was originally published June 24, 2020 at 6:31 PM.