‘Illegal late fees’ that ‘penalized poverty.’ Fresno court to end traffic ticket program

The Fresno County Superior Court is among at least 10 across California that have ended a late-fee program for traffic tickets that preyed on low-income people of color to generate money for the court systems, according to an attorney and civil rights organizations that sued over the practice.

The Fresno court was among the 10 worst in the state at imposing the program, attorney Zal Shroff told The Bee. In one fiscal year alone, 2018-19, the court collected roughly $5 million in late fees from more than 10,000 low-income Fresno residents, said Shroff, an attorney with the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay area.

The Fresno court didn’t respond to a request for comment Tuesday. Merrill Balassone, a spokeswoman with the state Judicial Council, said she couldn’t comment on pending litigation.

Shroff was the lead counsel on a lawsuit brought by his organization, the ACLU Foundation of Northern California, and Bay Area Legal Aid last year against the San Mateo Superior Court and then the Judicial Council of California.

On Tuesday, the organizations announced the end of their lawsuit, calling it a victory in a fight that had been ongoing for a long time. Their lawsuit argued the legality of “exorbitant court late fees known as ‘civil assessments’ — which California had encouraged courts to use to raise revenues,” the organizations said in their announcement.

“Just in the last 10 years, $700 million were taken from low-income communities of color who predominantly are already over-policed at traffic stops,” Shroff said. “The only people who are being charged this fee, are the people who can’t afford to pay on time, and those are the people who are funding to run the court systems.”

The organizations filed a resolution for dismissal based on a settlement reached with the Judicial Council and the San Mateo court.

As a result of the organizations’ lawsuit, the San Mateo County Superior Court announced it would no longer use this practice, and the Judicial Council issued new guidance for courts in the state. The Fresno court is among at least nine other courts that followed the direction of the San Mateo court to discontinue this particular program, Shroff said.

A new piece of legislation that passed in the wake of the organizations’ lawsuit also already has made a significant difference. All the debt that was outstanding up until July when the new law Assembly Bill 199 passed, Shroff said, is now eliminated statewide.

“What that means is that we eliminated about $1 billion of late fee debt for, I want to say, up to 1 million low-income Californians,” he said. “It was impacting a huge number of people with serious debt burden.”

The Judicial Council in its guidance says it has updated its policy on the fees, and had been working to “alleviate financial pressures for individuals struggling with court debt,” especially after the passage of AB 199.

The civil rights organizations said the “unlawful late fee programs ... penalized poverty.”

Shroff explained this particular program had been in place for about 20 years, and it came from the time of mass incarceration in California. The courts, he said, went into a fiscal crisis because they didn’t have the staff to handle the caseloads. Instead of the state’s Legislature providing more funding, he said, the courts were told to charge the people they were prosecuting.

“What we had is this late-fee scheme that was purely about revenue generation,” he said.

Comparisons to Ferguson police

This practice, Shroff said, aligns with the strategies the Ferguson (Missouri) Police Department had in place that also “preyed on low-income people for funding.”

“You can see that playing out in California,” he said, “with these kind of schemes, as well.”

The maximum amount the courts were allowed to charge was $300 for a late fee under this program, he said, with most courts imposing the maximum amount.

“That program... was basically an automated computerized system,” Shroff said, “that as as soon as you missed your first payment deadline, you suddenly had a bill that’s $300 more than it was before.”

AB 199 also reduced the maximum late-fee amount for traffic tickets to $100 effective July 2022, but the goal of the organizations is to get all courts to eliminate the program.

The late fees were also “a fundamental violation of due process and Constitutional rights,” Shroff said.

The victory announced on Tuesday, Shroff said, is an important step, but more work remains to be done as there are more fees imposed on people going through the criminal justice system, even for minor offenses.

Stephanie Campos-Bui, an assistant clinical professor of law at the University of California, Berkeley’s School of Law and Policy Advocacy Clinic, said California law previously authorized the criminal legal system to charge people with over 90 different fees.

“Over 40 have been eliminated to date but there are several that still remain, including fees to seal records, for parole supervision, for counseling programs,” among others, she told The Bee in an email.

The organizations’ goal, Shroff said, is to eliminate all fees currently on the books.

“It’s really important, I think, for the public to understand that even the court isn’t above the law,” he said, “and that we need to hold our government institutions to account when they harm the communities that they are meant to be serving.”