It was the eighth anniversary of Michael Brown’s death, and ºüÀêÊÓƵ County Circuit Court Judge Brian May was about to sign a document that had nothing to do with Brown but everything to do with the aftermath of his death.
May’s courtroom was packed Tuesday. Almost none of the people were there for him to sign an order agreeing to a class-action settlement.
May took a break from a high-profile trial over whether Monsanto’s weed-killer Roundup caused cancer so he could conduct a hearing to end a different lawsuit — one brought by attorney Rob Schultz in 2019.
The lawsuit alleged that the ºüÀêÊÓƵ County Municipal Court for years was charging an illegal $75 fee to defendants who missed court dates. Those fees, and others like them, would often serve as the precursor in municipal courts for further arrests, and sometimes incarceration, for failure to pay court costs.
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Schultz’s lawsuit was a cousin to the debtors’ prison lawsuits filed by ArchCity Defenders, the ºüÀêÊÓƵ University Law School clinics and others. They detailed practices in which mostly poor, Black people living in north ºüÀêÊÓƵ County would get charged with minor municipal offenses, miss a court date or a payment and ultimately spend time in jail because they couldn’t cover the costs.
The scheme of fines and fees charged to fill municipal coffers came to national attention after the protests in Ferguson and throughout ºüÀêÊÓƵ in 2014 and 2015.
That history was not lost on Schultz this week, after the judge signed the settlement that gave a massive victory to his clients — and the approximately 11,000 other people charged the court fees between 2012 and 2019, when the county stopped the practice. The settlement calls for the first 5,000 people who sign up to receive $100 from ºüÀêÊÓƵ County; the next 5,000 will receive $50.
People who believe they were charged the fee can sign up to receive a refund at a website set up for the settlement. Details will also be published in advertisements in the Post-Dispatch and the ºüÀêÊÓƵ American to try to find people who qualify for a refund.
“Ten years ago, I would have lost this case,†Schultz told me. “The whole municipal court scandal has changed the mindset.â€
It started with Ferguson. As protests roiled, both the Missouri Legislature and the Missouri Supreme Court stepped up to try to rein in some of the worst abuses of the municipal court system, which was being used as a fund-raising device for cash-strapped governments. Lawsuits forced municipalities to end their unconstitutional practices.
The failure-to-appear fee, or warrant fee as it was sometimes called, was just one example of governments charging defendants money that wasn’t authorized by law. Every year, the Missouri Supreme Court issues an order that contains all the fines and fees allowed by statute. A failure-to-appear fee has never been on the list, but that didn’t stop ºüÀêÊÓƵ County and other municipalities from charging it. Schultz continues to press similar lawsuits against the cities of Overland and Maryland Heights.
“If the courts don’t follow the law, it’s hard to make other people follow the law,†Schultz said.
The reality, though, is that courts at the municipal and county levels have long been used as back-door tax collectors in Missouri and around the country. The methods include collecting illegal fees, the expensive pay-to-stay fees some counties charge for jail time, or fees added to court cases by lawmakers as a way to fund pet projects.
Eight years after Brown’s death first brought wide attention to these practices, progress is being made. Last year, for instance, the Missouri Supreme Court ended the unconstitutional collection of a $3 fee that lawmakers had passed to fund rural sheriffs’ retirements. A related lawsuit has been filed in Jackson County seeking to erase several fees that are charged in court cases to raise money for a variety of causes.
The underlying issue in all of these cases is the same: Municipal courts should be places for justice, not for raising money on the backs of poor people.
Schultz’s case will cost taxpayers in the range of $1 million to cover the settlement and attorney fees. It’s a small price to pay for accountability that holds courts to the same standards they seek to impose upon defendants.
For too many years, Schultz says, the municipal courts have been “money grabbers.â€
One case at a time, those days are coming to an end.