New Jersey fines drivers for blocking EV charging spaces — private lots unresolved
New Jersey fines drivers for blocking EV charging spaces — private lots unresolved
2026-09-15 · New Jersey · Legislation
New Jersey now has a statewide fine schedule for blocking an electric-vehicle charging space, and it covers electric vehicles too.
P.L.2025, c.155 — A3035, second reprint — was signed November 13, 2025 and took effect immediately. It amends R.S.39:1-1 and R.S.39:4-138.1
What is prohibited
Parking is prohibited "In any electric vehicle charging space if the vehicle is a non-electric vehicle or is a plug-in electric vehicle, including a battery electric vehicle or plug-in hybrid electric vehicle, that is not actively charging."
That second clause is the one most communities have not absorbed. An owner who plugs in, finishes, and leaves the car in the bay overnight is in violation on the same footing as the neighbour who parked a pickup there.
The signage condition
The prohibition only bites where the space is "clearly marked with signage and pavement markings… which signage and pavement markings shall be visible during the day and night."
Both are required, and both must work after dark. A painted symbol with no post sign, or a post sign over unmarked asphalt, does not satisfy the statute.
The penalties
$55 for a first offense, $100 for a second, $200 for a third and each subsequent offense. Towing "shall be at the discretion of the municipality," and where the municipality tows, "the registered owner or lessee … shall be responsible for all towing and storage costs."
The open question: does it reach a private community?
This is genuinely unresolved on the face of the statute, and it matters, because most association charging spaces sit on private property.
Look at the drafting. The adjacent subsection of the same statute — the disabled-parking provision at subsection (o) — expressly applies "on public or private property." The new EV subsection (p) does not contain that phrase.
A court reading those two subsections together would have to explain why the Legislature included the private-property language in one and omitted it in the next. The ordinary canon is that the omission was deliberate. That is an argument, not a holding; no New Jersey court has construed subsection (p), and we found no agency guidance either way.
New Jersey's usual route for extending Title 39 to private roads and lots is a municipal ordinance under N.J.S.A. 39:5A-1, which allows a municipality to apply motor-vehicle law to semi-public and private property with the owner's consent. Associations that want police-enforceable EV parking rules have that path available regardless of how subsection (p) is eventually read.
What a board can do without waiting for an answer
An association's own enforcement authority over parking on common elements does not depend on Title 39 at all. It comes from the governing documents and from PREDFDA's alternative dispute resolution framework, and it is the tool boards already use for every other parking rule.
Three practical points follow. A rule that mirrors the statute — prohibiting occupancy of a charging bay by a non-charging vehicle — is enforceable as an association rule if properly adopted, whatever subsection (p) turns out to mean. Association fines are subject to the notice and ADR requirements PREDFDA imposes, which the statutory $55 ticket is not. And towing from common elements in New Jersey has its own statutory regime, separate from the municipal towing discretion this act creates.
The signage point is the actionable one
If an association wants either route to work, the bays need both post signage and pavement markings, legible at night. That is a small capital item, and it is the precondition the statute makes explicit — and it is equally good practice for an association rule, because the enforceability of any parking restriction turns on notice.
Where this fits
New Jersey now has four EV statutes reaching community associations: the PREDFDA provision barring unreasonable restriction of an owner's charger, the 2021 make-ready mandate for new construction as amended in July 2026, the dormant kilowatt-based alternative compliance method signed in August 2026, and this parking-enforcement provision. Only the first speaks directly to an established association, and none of them tells a board what to do about a charging bay that is full of finished cars.
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