A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit alleging a new state law allowing pregnant women to use parking spaces reserved for people with disabilities violates federal protections.
Siding with the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles, Chief U.S. District Judge Allen Winsor on Friday ruled that plaintiff Olivia Keller, a disability rights advocate who uses a wheelchair, lacked what is known as “standing” to file the lawsuit because she has “not shown any injury fairly traceable” to the agency.
Winsor’s decision said he did not address the underlying merits of the lawsuit, which was filed in October and named as defendants the state agency and its director, Dave Kerner.
The “expectant mother parking permit” allows pregnant women to obtain disabled parking placards at any point in their pregnancies. The permit, which women can get with notes from their doctors confirming they are pregnant, costs $15 and lasts for a year.
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The lawsuit alleged that the parking permits for pregnant women violate the federal Americans with Disabilities Act and other protections designed to ensure people with disabilities have access to places where they can work, attend school, shop for food and get medical care, among other things.
Federal and state laws set minimum numbers of spaces required for people with disabilities, but the need for the parking spots far outstrips the amount provided, according to Keller’s lawsuit. Allowing pregnant women to use an already-inadequate number of parking spaces has exacerbated problems for Keller and other people with disabilities, the legal challenge said.
Agreeing with lawyers for the state agency, however, Winsor found that “any connection between her (Keller’s) alleged harm and the new law is speculative.”
Keller’s “problem … is that she has not linked any imminent parking scarcity to the department’s issuing permits to expectant mothers,” the judge wrote in the nine-page ruling.
Even before the new law went into effect, there was “no guarantee … that there will always be sufficient spots to accommodate everyone with a permit,” Winsor noted.
Winsor pointed to a part of Keller’s lawsuit saying that, prior to the new law, she “often had to arrive two to three hours early” before work “and sometimes circled the complex for over thirty minutes” to find a parking space that could accommodate her van.
“But this lawsuit is about the new law. And here, neither the new law nor the department’s actions in implementing it will cause Keller’s harm unless each of the following materialize: (1) A woman will apply for and receive an expectant-mother parking permit; (2) she would have been ineligible for — and not have obtained — any disabled parking permit absent the law; (3) she will park in the same lot Keller seeks to park at the same time; and (4) all accessible parking is taken when Keller arrives,” the ruling said.
Winsor’s decision said “it appears unlikely that Keller can allege additional facts to cure the complaint’s deficiencies” but gave her 14 days to file an amended lawsuit.
In an interview with The News Service of Florida on Monday, Keller said that her status as a driver with disabilities should meet the threshold for legal standing to challenge the law. Winsor’s ruling would effectively require Keller to “stalk people in parking lots” to determine if pregnant women are occupying spots designated for people with disabilities, she said.
“This is a ridiculous, absurd, impossible-to-reach standard. Math and my qualifying disability should be enough for standing because obviously I’m going to be impacted when you increase the number of people eligible to park in a number of finite spaces,” Keller said.
Matthew Dietz, a disability-rights attorney who filed the lawsuit on behalf of Keller, said in an interview Monday that Winsor’s ruling sets “an incredibly high standard to meet” to be deemed eligible to challenge the law.
“It basically says, in order for you to have a case, you actually have to know that you are going to be discriminated against and when, how and where, and how often, so it’s difficult,” he said.
Under federal law, pregnancy is not considered a disability but is covered by discrimination protections. Women with "complicated pregnancies" have always been able to get disabled-parking permits if their doctors deem they are needed, according to Keller.
Roughly 1.3 million of Florida’s 18.5 million drivers — 7 percent — have permanent parking permits issued because of disabilities, the lawsuit said. The number doesn’t include permits issued for temporary disabilities. Meanwhile, the number of parking spaces required to be reserved for disabled permits generally ranges from 2 percent to 4 percent, with medical facilities requiring more.
There were 9,714 "expectant mother" permits issued between July and December 2025, according to data WUSF received from the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles (FHSMV). Temporary parking permits for pregnant women, which are red in color, are identical to people with temporary disabilities.
Keller did not say whether she would appeal Winsor’s ruling or try to file a revised lawsuit.
“This definitely won’t be the end of it,” she said.
