By Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D.

Attorney Ray Flores is appealing the dismissal of a federal lawsuit challenging a National Park Service policy that prevents visitors from using cash to pay for entrance fees at some parks. Children’s Health Defense (CHD) funded the suit.

In an appeal filed today in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, Flores argued that the district court was wrong to dismiss the lawsuit. He asked the appeals court to reverse the dismissal so that the case can proceed — or to declare that the National Park Service’s no-cash policy is unlawful.

“Preserving cash protects freedom,” Flores told The Defender.

The lawsuit alleges the National Park Service’s refusal to accept cash for entry fee payment at many of its sites is illegal because U.S. law defines cash as “legal tender for all debts, public charges, taxes, and dues.”

Flores filed the suit on March 6, 2024, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, on behalf of Toby Stover and two other plaintiffs.

The court initially dismissed all three plaintiffs’ claims. However, it allowed the plaintiffs to submit an amended complaint, which Stover alone did on March 4, 2025.

In January 2024, Stover tried to visit the Home of Franklin D. Roosevelt National Historic Site, run by the National Park Service, in Hyde Park, New York. According to the complaint, park officials turned her away when she tried to use a $10 bill to pay her entrance fee.

Nearly 30 national parks, historic sites and monuments deny entrance to those who try to pay with cash, the amended complaint said. The park service Cashless Fee Collection FAQ states that it accepts only credit, debit and other electronic forms of payment, such as Apple Pay.

Stover asked the court to declare this practice unlawful, which would mean the park service would be forced to let visitors pay with cash. She is also seeking relief for the cost of the suit, including attorney fees.

On Dec. 3, 2025, the court dismissed Stover’s case, claiming she lacked legal standing to sue the park system because she hadn’t shown that she was “suffering an ongoing injury” or faced an “immediate threat of injury.”

According to U.S. District Judge Timothy J. Kelly, Stover’s choice to avoid visiting Hyde Park until it accepts cash is an ongoing injury of her “own making.”

“Such ‘self-inflicted harm’ … ‘doesn’t satisfy the basic requirement for standing,’” he wrote.

Flores disagreed. The National Park Service’s no-cash policy is causing Stover “concrete, ongoing, and actual harm,” he wrote.

He argued the court “pre-judged” that the park service’s no-cash policy was acceptable when it dismissed the case. He wrote:

“Although no U.S. law allows the NPS [National Park Service] to exclusively define legal tender as electronic payment, the District Court pretended or presumed such a law existed when it ruled that Ms. Stover brought the harm upon herself when she tendered U.S. currency at Hyde Park.”

The district court’s ruling gave the National Park Service “leeway to continue to violate federal law.” For that reason, the appeals court must reverse its ruling and let Stover’s case proceed, Flores said.

Flores said that Stover’s situation begs the question: “Does the U.S. Government have the right to refuse to accept the currency it demands we use?”

“The commonsense answer is, obviously not,” Flores wrote.

Defendants in the case are the National Park Service, the U.S. Department of the Interior, which oversees the national parks, and former director Charles F. Sams III in his official capacity as park service director.

Lawsuit is about people’s right to not be ‘traced or tracked’

Stover told The Defender that the case isn’t about her, personally. “This is really about our right as Americans and people of the world to use something that’s secure and safe, such as cash, where you can’t be traced or tracked,” she said.

With cash, there’s no electronic footprint of the transaction. Plus, credit cards burden the user with fees that pay the “middleman,” she said.

Some people don’t have a bank account or credit card, Stover pointed out. They should still be able to travel freely and visit U.S. national parks.

The park service has been implementing and expanding a cashless entry payment system over the past few years. In July 2025, Shenandoah National Park became one of the latest parks to stop accepting cash.

Stover said she is fighting the National Park Service’s cashless policy because the digitalization of money is “very dangerous.”

She pointed out that the Canadian government was able to shut down the truckers’ protest against a COVID-19 vaccine mandate by freezing the protesters’ bank accounts.

The truckers, dubbed the “Convoy for Freedom,” organized a cross-country protest beginning in January 2022, after the Canadian federal government mandated the COVID-19 vaccine for all cross-border U.S. and Canadian truckers.

Using cash is ‘most important step in stopping the creeping digital control grid’

Carolyn Betts, general counsel of Solari Inc. and co-host of “Financial Rebellion” with Catherine Austin Fitts, praised Stover’s lawsuit.

“Using cash as much as possible and stopping any government efforts to limit the use of cash probably is the most important step in stopping the creeping digital control grid,” Betts said.

In October 2025, The Defender reported that top figures in the Trump administration were rolling out policies that promote a technocratic system of global digital control, according to Technocracy News founder Patrick Wood.

The technocratic project, developed in the early 1930s and adopted by behind-the-scenes oligarchs, envisions a society controlled by elite technical experts who advocate for social engineering, the abolition of private property and scientific dictatorship, said Wood, author of “Technocracy Rising.”

That project is expanding, he said. Leaders in today’s technocracy movement include Elon Musk, Palantir founder Peter Thiel, President Donald Trump’s AI and crypto czar David Sacks, Vice President JD Vance’s mentor Curtis Yarvin, billionaire investor Marc Andreessen, Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Michael Kratsios, U.S. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick, and Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison.

“The new and expanded goal of technocracy is to build an empire throughout the world using AI [artificial intelligence] and crypto blockchain technology as weapons of mass subjugation,” Wood said.

Related articles in The Defender

• CHD to Appeal After Court Rules Against Woman Who Sued National Park Service Over No-Cash Policy
• Woman Sues National Park Service After Being Told She Can’t Use Cash to Pay Entry Fee
• ‘On the Backs of Digital Slaves’: Musk, Other Trump-Era Tech Elites Building Global Digital Control Grid
• Will U.S. Trade Cash for CBDCs? Fed Sends Mixed Messages
• Central Bank Digital Currencies: What They Are, and What’s at Stake

The post Lawsuit Challenging National Park Service’s Cashless Policy Moves to Appeals Court appeared first on Children’s Health Defense.

 

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