Window Tint Laws

[AZDude]

So, lets say the window tint on your car is 35% and is legal in your state.  Now, you decide to go on a road trip into a state where 35% is illegal.  Should you get ticketed?  I know that legally you COULD get a ticket, but I want to know if you SHOULD BE.

My opinion is NO.  You should not even be stopped for tint alone.  If the cops see out of state plates they should just leave them alone if they are not doing anything else illegal.

The way I see it is this.  Some states require both a front and rear plate.  Some only a rear plate.  You don't expect a driver from a one plate state to have two plates if he/she is just driving through.  Also, you don't expect an Arizona driver to need a New Mexico License just so he/she can drive through New Mexico do you?

Plus tint is not something that you can just peel off and put back on.  If it was, then it would be ok.

[corco]

Yeah, I don't see that is being legal since a change in window tinting is difficult. States should respect the vehicle equipment laws of the state in which the vehicle is registered. I think that's indirectly in the Constitution somewhere- just like we recognize marriages across state lines.

On a similar note, if I have a Wyoming registered vehicle with studs on them, I cannot drive my car into Texas. Studded tires are legal year-round in Wyoming, but are prohibited in Texas, and people can receive tickets for violating that law. I know a guy who drove his Wyoming-plated truck to Amarillo from Laramie in the dead of winter when the roads were bad for much of the trek and left his studs on for the drive. He pulled into a gas station to fill up in Dalhart and a cop saw his parked vehicle with studs and gave him a ticket as soon as he pulled onto the local roadway.

In that instance, I'm not sure quite what the right answer is. It's a pain in the ass to swap tires out (especially if you don't have individual sets of rims for each set of tires), but studs do cause extra wear on the roadway. Ideally, I guess some sort of "stud toll" would be good, but that would open a whole other ball of wax.

That's a small part of why I rented a vehicle for the Tulsa meet last February- I wasn't ready to take my studs off my car in February and did not want to risk a ticket while driving through Texas.

[mightyace]

Of course, it's a lot easier to remove studded tires than window tinting. 

[J N Winkler]

So, lets say the window tint on your car is 35% and is legal in your state.  Now, you decide to go on a road trip into a state where 35% is illegal.  Should you get ticketed?  I know that legally you COULD get a ticket, but I want to know if you SHOULD BE.

My opinion is that NO.  You should not even be stopped for tint alone.  If the cops see out of state plates they should just leave them alone if they are not doing anything else illegal.

The way I see it is this.  Some states require both a front and rear plate.  Some only a rear plate.  You don't expect a driver from a one plate state to have two plates if he/she is just driving through.  Also, you don't expect an Arizona driver to need a New Mexico License just so he/she can drive through New Mexico do you?

Plus tint is not something that you can just peel off and put back on.  If it was, then it would be ok.

This is a difficult question.  The full faith and credit clause and the citizenship clause in the Fourteenth Amendment require a state to recognize certain legal actions which might not be legally possible within the state asked to grant recognition.  However, this area of jurisprudence is complicated and tends not to lead to holdings which can be spelled out in absolute terms.

Where motor vehicles are concerned, recognition is more likely to be granted within the context of immatriculation.  For example, California has tighter vehicle emissions standards but if you come from out of state with a car which complies just with federal (not California) emissions standards, you are allowed to register your car in California.  Similarly, any feature of the car that qualifies as legal OEM equipment (meets FMVSS and any other applicable standards in the state of first registration) will not be a barrier to re-registration of the car in another state.  If the car is registered in a state which requires rear license plates only and is driven into another state which requires license plates on the front, it will attract odd stares and harsh comments from residents of that state, but legally it cannot be touched.

Studded tires and aftermarket window film, on the other hand, have nothing to do with immatriculation because they are not OEM and are added to a car at the owner's sole option.  States are perfectly entitled to pass laws against excessive window tint under the general police power, which is reserved to them under the Constitution, and they are not required to extend recognition to a mere failure to legislate against excessive window tint in another state.  80% pass-through is the OEM norm, the federal government requires 70% minimum pass-through on commercial vehicles (private vehicles are left unregulated at the federal level), and state laws regulating window tint specify minimum pass-through values ranging from 20% to 70%.  Minimum pass-through values tend to drop with latitude, commensurate with the intensity of summer sunlight.  You can drive your Alaska-registered car down to New Mexico (20% minimum pass-through), but if you have heavy window tint (and state law in the destination state does not provide special protection for out-of-state vehicles), you cannot drive your New Mexico-registered car up to Alaska (70% minimum pass-through).  This situation could be challenged in federal court but I would expect such a challenge to fail because states do have a genuine public policy interest in regulating window tint.  Reasonable people can disagree as to the extent of this interest but I believe a federal judge would be required to treat the state's claim of public policy justification with deference, i.e. to evaluate it in the light that is most favorable to the state's case.

Edit:  See also the discussion here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Window_Tint