JEFFERSON CITY — Buried at the bottom of my desk is a notebook chock-full of interviews about Missouri’s Brain Injury Fund. The money in the fund, which was established in 2011, is distributed to various nonprofit organizations that help people deal with the trauma of a brain injury, after a fall or other event.
Some of the folks who do this important work came to me a few years ago, in 2018, to tell me about their efforts. They introduced me to a man who, with training and help from the fund, was able to overcome his disabilities at least enough to hold down a regular job at a grocery store. At the time, they were advocating for more funding from the Legislature.
The reason the notebook is at the bottom of my desk, with interviews that never made their way to print, is related to why Kansas City attorney Sam Wendt on Tuesday. Three years ago, Wendt filed a lawsuit on behalf of his client, Benjamin Ramirez, against the state of Missouri and several other defendants related to various court costs all Missourians pay when they get a traffic ticket or otherwise end up in court as a criminal defendant.
People are also reading…
For poor people, these fees, most of which have nothing to do with the actual dispensation of justice in the court system, can become a tremendous burden, trapping them in a cycle of debt that often leads to jail. Particularly in states that have Republican-dominated legislatures, where most of the members have signed “no new taxes†pledges, states have increasingly turned their local judges into back-door tax collectors, one $2 or $3 fee at a time.
It was in 2018 that I started learning what a pervasive problem this modern-day debtors’ prison system is, in Missouri and nationally. In some states, these fees have risen more than 400% since the last Great Recession. That’s why I ultimately declined to help the brain injury folks in their effort to urge the Legislature to increase the $2 fee that helps fund their work.
Wendt is trying to make that fee go away, as well as several others. There is one that funds independent living centers for disabled folks, and another that helps people with spinal cord injuries. There is one for motorcycle safety and another for crime victims. There is a fund for prosecutors’ retirements, and another for DNA analysis.
“While each of these seven funds are intended for good and decent purposes, they should not be funded on the backs of criminal defendants in the state of Missouri,†Wendt told the court. Instead, the constituencies seeking those funds should have to compete for money with other issues that seek funding from the Missouri Legislature, like schools, and roads, and health care.
Wendt’s case follows a similar path as one the Missouri Supreme Court ruled on in 2021, when a unanimous court said that a $3 fee to pay for sheriffs’ retirements was unconstitutional. That decision relied on another, similar case from 1986 in which a unanimous court ruled that court costs that are not “reasonably related to the administration of justice,†should not be charged to people trying to have access to justice, whether on the civil or criminal side of the courts.
Part of Wendt’s case — against the Prosecuting Attorneys and Circuit Attorneys Retirement System — is headed to trial in Jackson County, likely on path for a similar outcome as the sheriffs’ retirement fund. In fact, the prosecutors have been pushing a bill in the Legislature for the past two years, preparing for the eventual loss of funding from court costs, seeking to merge with another state retirement system.
But a circuit court judge dropped the brain injury fund and six other similar funds from the case, and that’s the part that was before the Missouri Supreme Court. Wendt appealed that ruling and is trying to get those funds added back to the prosecutors’ retirement fund case. The office of Attorney General Andrew Bailey, arguing on behalf of the state treasurer and Department of Revenue, said the funds don’t have the capacity to be sued because of sovereign immunity laws.
If that’s the case, then the fees will be there for perpetuity, raising the cost of every traffic ticket and court case in Missouri, which is fine for those of us who can afford the payment, but not so much for those who can’t. It’s that dual system of justice that the Missouri Constitution’s “open courts†provision is intended to avoid, Wendt told the judges. The cases affect more than 1.5 million Missourians a year and the underlying fees produce more than $10 million a year in revenue.
If Wendt wins his argument — as the court’s precedent suggests he should — I’ll be digging out that old notebook, so I can help the folks who help alleviate brain injuries explain to the Missouri Legislature why a new, more appropriate, funding source is so important.