On March 6, 2024, three people filed a lawsuit against the National Park Service over its cashless policy. The three, including a resident of Southern California, claimed the new policy prevented them from accessing national parks and monuments in Arizona, Georgia, and New York. They alleged that the cashless policy violated federal laws which state that U.S. currency is legal tender for all public charges.
Their grievance arose from the fact that they were barred from entering parks because they offered to pay in cash. The Southern California resident, for example, was barred from entering three national parks in Arizona.
NPS instituted a new cashless policy in 29 of its parks in 2023. One of these is California’s Death Valley National Park. In making the change, NPS argued that the $22,000 it collected in cash payments in 2022 cost over $40,000 to process. These costs included the time rangers took to count the cash and hiring of armored cars to transport the money.
NPS maintains that going cashless leads to a reduction in wait times and enables better service delivery. The plaintiffs, in their lawsuit, stated that NPS should not be allowed to violate federal law despite the purported benefits of going cashless.
