Charlottesville’s Legal Aid Justice Center is challenging a system that they say is punishing the poor. It’s filed a class action lawsuit in federal court, asserting that Virginia is crippling hundreds of thousands of low-income residents by suspending their driver’s licenses for failure to pay court costs and fines. Legal Aid says our current approach is simply unconstitutional.
After struggling with addiction and mental illness, Jayne Fuentes served her time, found a job and got her life back on track. But even though she’d been sober and crime-free for years, one thing dogged her: fear of being jailed or forced to do physical labor because she can’t afford to pay the government. Jayne is among the scores of people who owe Benton County, Washington thousands of …
Jackson has agreed to settle a federal class-action lawsuit by ending the practice of jailing indigent people who can’t pay fines and fees in misdemeanor cases. The city agreed to give indigent defendants the choice …
JACKSON Municipal-court systems that practice “pay or stay” policies, jailing people who cannot afford fines such as Jackson has done, are facing legal objections across the South from groups like the American Civil Liberties Union. In addition to Jackson, this includes the Municipal Court of Biloxi. “The Supreme Court has held, consistently and for a long period of time, basically that you …
South Carolina’s lawsuit calling for million-dollar fines and plutonium removal should be dismissed because the state is wrongly interpreting the laws governing a long-delayed nuclear fuel project, the U.S. Energy Department said in court documents. In its first official response to the state’s lawsuit, the federal government also argued Monday that any potential fines for …
The number of residents suing the city for what they claim are unconstitutional municipal fines policies has grown to six as the lawyers seek class action status that could potentially include 5 to 6 thousand plaintiffs. Attorneys for the plaintiffs have stated an interest in resolving the case before it potentially expands its scope dramatically. “There is no reason the city of Amarillo can’t …