There is a plaque on the wall in Frank Vatterott’s law office, an award from the Missouri Supreme Court from his time as a municipal court judge.
“They can take it back,†he told me the first time we met, in the fall of 2016.
At the time, Vatterott was already several years into a battle with the state’s judiciary over a $3 court surcharge that raises money for the . Since the fund’s inception in 1984, when the Missouri Legislature gave it life, the surcharge had been applied to every circuit court criminal case in the state. Starting in 2013, after former state senator and current Gov. Mike Parson — a former sheriff — threatened the state’s high court with its budget, the cost had also been applied to most municipal courts in the state.
But not in Overland, where Vatterott was a judge, or any other municipalities in ºüÀêÊÓƵ County, or several others in the state. That’s because Vatterott and many other judges found the cost to be an unconstitutional “sale of justice,†an obstacle for poor people to participate in the courts.
People are also reading…
At the time I met Vatterott, he was losing his battle, with the courts having tossed two lawsuits he filed trying to get the law overturned.
On Tuesday, Vatterott won. In a unanimous ruling in a case involving two Kansas City men, Jerry Keller and Daven Fowler, who had paid the $3 surcharge as part of traffic tickets they received, the Missouri Supreme Court ruled that the statute that created the charge is unconstitutional. Vatterott wasn’t the attorney in the case, but make no mistake, this was his baby, and he was thrilled with the decision.
“Seven years of work!†he texted me. “Justice!â€
Indeed, it was. , the court said that its previous ruling in the Harrison case in 1986, two years after the sheriffs’ retirement fund was created, “laid down a bright-line rule that court costs used to enhance compensation paid to executive officials are not ‘reasonably related to the administration of justice,’ and, therefore (are unconstitutional).â€
The case now goes back to Jackson County Circuit Court Judge Kevin Harrell, who has to decide if he will certify the case as a class action lawsuit, which seems likely because thousands of Missourians have paid the same $3 surcharge over the years since 1984 that Keller and Fowler paid.
Their attorneys, and , said that “if a class is certified we will seek millions in refunds for municipal court litigants who paid the unconstitutional surcharge.â€
That next step has the sheriffs’ retirement fund preparing for battle in the Legislature. The fund recently issued a request for proposals for a lobbying firm, suggesting it will be asking state lawmakers to change the law to somehow make it constitutional, which will require a different funding source, other than the mostly poor people who are dragged through the court system and required to pay fines and fees that many of them can’t afford.
Frankly, that’s a good debate for the Legislature to have. The same body that nearly unanimously said in 2019 that it was bad public policy to put poor people in jail because they couldn’t afford previous pay-to-stay jail bills, will have to decide if it will continue to use the courts as a back-door tax to fund government services.
That is a debate that is happening in state capitols all over the country, says Joanna Weiss, co-director of the
“The idea of a fee added to a criminal or even traffic conviction was originally meant to recoup costs. State and local governments have gone further and further creating dozens, hundreds, even thousands of regressive taxes that attach to every conviction in the country,†Weiss says. “Policymakers are learning that court fees are not the cash cows they hoped for and they come with unseen costs to government and devastating harms to low income communities and communities of color. And the courts are recognizing that the free-for-all that allowed for the creation of all these fees has become wildly out of control. You cannot make people with criminal and traffic convictions responsible for funding government.â€
That was the simple thought that drove Vatterott on his lonely seven-year path battling the upper echelons of power in the profession that he loves and has passed on to his daughter. He’s retired now, and I don’t know if the plaque still hangs on the wall. But a 6-0 decision will live in Missouri history long after he’s gone.
“This case increases my faith in the judicial system,†Vatterott says. “It is an affirmation of a basic tenet of Western civilization as set out in the Magna Carta. People must not be denied the right to pursue justice or defend their rights in court, without being subjected to political payoffs to favored groups. There can be no sale of justice.â€