National Park Service facing lawsuit from visitors who want to use cash

LOS ANGELES — The National Park Service has been sued over its policy of accepting only payment of credit cards or debit cards for entry fees and refusing to take cash, a policy the agency that manages national parks, national monuments and other sites adopted last year.

Three park visitors, Esther van der Werf of Ojai, California; Toby Stover of High Falls, New York; and Elizabeth Dasburg of Darien, Georgia, filed the lawsuit March 6 in the U.S. District Court of D.C., saying that they were prevented from using cash at national parks, historic sites and monuments across the country, including in Arizona, New York and Georgia.

They said that the National Park Service’s cashless policy violates federal law, citing a U.S. code that requires U.S. currency to be legal tender for all public charges. But the federal agency argues accepting cash is costly and time-consuming.

Van der Werf said she was denied entry at the Tonto National Monument, Saguaro National Park and Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument in Arizona, according to the lawsuit.

Stover wasn’t able to visit the Roosevelt-Vanderbilt National Historic Site in New York after trying to pay for the $10 tour in cash. Dasburg emailed the Ft. Pulaski National Historic Site in Georgia to ask how to enter the park without a debit or credit card and was told to go to a Walmart or grocery store to buy a gift card.

The NPS began implementing cashless policies at multiple locations in 2023, including Death Valley National Park. The park service said in a news release that $22,000 in cash collected at Death Valley the previous year took more than $40,000 to process.