Sam Wendt is suing a bunch of organizations that do important and difficult work.
There’s the Brain Injury Fund, the Domestic Relations Resolutions Fund, the Independent Living Center Fund, the Motorcycle Safety Trust Fund, the Spinal Cord Injury Fund, the Missouri Prosecuting Attorneys and Circuit Clerks Retirement System, and several other organizations that get their funding from court costs.
In the past 20 years, these funds have raised more than $100 million from defendants in Missouri, most of them charged with minor crimes, many of them living in poverty.
“Some of these are wonderful causes, but they shouldn’t just be funded on the backs of criminal defendants,†Wendt says. “It’s $3 here, it’s $5 there. Individually it doesn’t seem like much but when it applies to every single civil and criminal litigant in the state, that adds up very quickly.â€
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Wendt is part of a team of Kansas City attorneys that filed a lawsuit in Jackson County Circuit Court last year targeting those fees that end up trapping poor people in a “vicious cycle†because all too often, after they can’t pay their court costs, they end up back in jail, and their costs rise even higher.
This is how somebody like Brooke Bergen, a Dent County woman I’ve written about many times, ended up doing a year in jail for stealing an $8 tube of mascara, and owing a $15,000 bill to the court. It’s how Cory Booth was tethered to the courts in Caldwell County more than 10 years after he stole a lawnmower as a 17-year-old, even though he had not committed another crime. He was called to the courthouse month after month, just because he owed thousands of dollars that was never going to be collected.
All over the country, there are people lined up in courtrooms every day simply because they owe the courts money. The judges and attorneys even have a name for it: the revenue docket.
That absurdity is part of an that caused three national organizations on Thursday to kick off a national campaign called .
“Lawmakers all over the country are waking up to the reality that for vulnerable individuals, families and communities to thrive, we need to eliminate the many justice fees that are unfairly taxing them,†said Lisa Foster, co-director of the Fines and Fees Justice Center. “Indeed, just Monday, Delaware’s governor signed one of the most comprehensive fee elimination bills in the country.â€
The eliminates nearly all fines in the juvenile justice system, it repeals fees for probation supervision and using a public defender, and it ends the practice of courts charging fees for payment plans or collecting interest from defendants who fall behind paying their court costs.
The bipartisan End Justice Fees campaign, supported by the on the left, and on the right, urges state legislatures to do precisely what Wendt is trying to accomplish in court. Eliminate the practice of passing back-door taxes on to the court system and turning judges into tax collectors.
“We believe that the fees imposed by the criminal justice system are just taxes by another name,†said Emily Seidel, CEO of Americans for Prosperity. “They do not improve public safety.â€
In some cases, positive action can also be taken by cities and counties themselves, such as when the ºüÀêÊÓƵ County Council in 2019 eliminated several jail and medical fees and wiped away about $3 million in outstanding debts. Similarly, several north ºüÀêÊÓƵ County municipalities wiped out old court debt over the past few years, in part in response to lawsuits filed by ArchCity Defenders, the ºüÀêÊÓƵ University Law School Clinics and others.
Wendt wasn’t even aware of this problem until last year, when the Missouri Supreme Court in a unanimous decision ruled a $3 fee that was charged to defendants to raise money for a retirement fund for rural sheriffs was unconstitutional. That battle started when municipal judges led by Frank Vatterott of Overland refused to collect the fee.
“Politicians take advantage of people who are charged with minor offenses knowing they can’t fight these insidious taxes,†Vatterott says.
by the End Justice Fees campaign suggests a clear majority of Americans agree with Vatterott that the courts should not be used to raise money that should be otherwise funded by legislatures. According to the poll, 62% of respondents agree with the elimination of fees in the court system.
Nonpayment of those fees often comes with devastating consequences, from the suspension of driver’s licenses, to an actual return to debtors’ prison, as happened in Missouri for failure to pay “board bills†charged for stays in most rural jails in the state.
In 2019, both the Missouri Supreme Court and the Missouri Legislature put an end to that insidious practice, but the board bills are still being charged, as are more than a dozen fees that are likely as unconstitutional as the $3 sheriffs retirement fee that was eliminated.
“These costs are totally unrelated to the administration of justice in the court system,†Wendt says. “They shouldn’t exist.â€