The San Mateo County Superior Court faces suit from civil rights groups over unreasonably high penalties they claim disproportionately affect low income residents, homeless and black and brown Californians.
According to a press release on Jan. 27, the lawsuit was filed by the ACLU Foundation of Northern California, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area, Bay Area Legal Aid and Fenwick and West LLP. It challenges a $300 charge that is imposed each time someone misses a payment or court deadline in a traffic violation case. The release states this is often six to eight times higher than the base fine for a traffic violation in the state of California. The fee is handed out by the court without adequate notice or any review of the person’s case.
“Unhoused people are much more likely to receive a civil assessment fee because, without a stable mailing address, housing instability may prevent them from receiving notifications about citations or court dates,” said Brandon Greene, racial and economic justice director at the ACLU of Northern California. “Likewise, other people who face unstable housing environments, like juveniles in foster care and domestic violence survivors, have added challenges to appearing in court and are therefore more likely to receive one of these fees.”
The case centers around 28-year-old Anthony McCree, a black man who received a citation for evading payment on public transportation while on the way to a job interview. McCree was homeless at the time. When he missed the payment he received an automatic $300 penalty, while the base fine was only a maximum of $250 for fare evasion. Years later, he received notices from the court saying he owed a total of $860. The lawsuit was filed on the behalf of McCree as well as Debts Collective.
The lawsuit alleges black and brown people are subject to traffic stops and citations more than white people. Police reportedly pull over black drivers twice as often in San Mateo County as they do white drivers. If homeless, a person is more likely to miss a court notification, as they don’t have a mailing address.
Rio Scharf, with Equal Justice Works, is one of the attorneys representing the plaintiffs, and spoke to the Northern California Record about the lawsuit. According to Scharf, a number of laws have been violated in this case. The actual law authorizing the fees requires the court to use discretion, but he said this is not done in San Mateo County. He said that the court’s process violates both the state's and the U.S. Constitutions’ due process clause. Scharf also said the fee is supposed to be imposed by judges directly, but this process is instead delegated to a computer system.
“In every single instance where a defendant is eligible for one of these fees, the court imposes it and imposes it at the maximum amount of $300,” Scharf said. “That is not what the law was intended to provide for. The law was intended to require courts to consider the details of each case.”
Scharf said it is important to talk about the racial aspect of this case. He called it a regressive form of taxation and noted that due to overpolicing, especially with traffic violations and the racial wealth gap, minorities take the hardest hits.
“They really function to raise revenue for the court largely on the backs of black and brown Californians,” Scharf said. “It is largely people of color who are affected by these civil assessments.”