Tammy Williams, a working mother of five, paid by check when she needed groceries and household supplies in 1997. Unfortunately, her bank account ran low on funds. Four of her checks bounced at stores near her home in Sherwood, north of Little Rock, Arkansas.
Penalties can be stiff for such errors, especially for shoppers who lack overdraft protection. But what happened to Williams went far beyond bank fees. For the next two decades, police and prosecutors maintained a steady campaign of harassment against her with help from Sherwood City Court.
The pile-on included multiple arrests, fines, and incarcerations. On one occasion, officers took Williams into custody on her daughter’s birthday. Another time, they showed up at her workplace and threatened to remove her if she could not pay $200 cash on the spot. One holiday season, they put her behind bars and kept her locked up for 30 days until her husband sold the couple’s interest in a family home to cover the city’s $2,500 cash demand.
Sherwood officials did not care that the four bad checks had totaled less than $300. Using Williams’s inability to pay as leverage, they tacked on additional warrants and fines until her costs topped $5,000.
Victims trapped in the never-ending cycle of court proceedings eventually sued to stop the abuse, triggering a settlement and promise of reform in 2016. The victory provided a degree of relief, but the city refused to provide compensation for the years of suffering it had caused. Rather than accept the government’s lack of accountability, Williams filed a second lawsuit, this time in federal court to recover damages.
After losing at the trial court level, Williams took her case to the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis. Three judges heard arguments and acknowledged that abuse had occurred, but the panel ruled on Jan. 28 that cities cannot be held liable for the unconstitutional actions they perform through municipal courts.
The 20-year struggle highlights a nationwide problem with municipal courts. Unlike higher courts at the county and state levels, local operations have a direct financial interest in judicial outcomes.
Many cities and towns grow dependent on the revenue and look for ways to expand it, especially during periods of economic stress. As sales tax revenue and other sources of municipal income dry up during the coronavirus pandemic, the result in many communities will be a surge in traffic, parking, and misdemeanor enforcement.
Thousands of people such as Williams will be caught in municipal court systems focused on fines and fees. The result is a type of government abuse called “taxation by citation,” which occurs when cities and towns use code enforcement to raise revenue rather than solely to protect the public.
A new Institute for Justice report measures the risk in all 50 states. The first-of-its-kind analysis, published April 30, examines dozens of legal factors to rank states according to how likely their laws are to enable and even encourage taxation by citation. Georgia scores worst in the report, while North Carolina scores best.
Arkansas actually performs well in the survey due to reforms that started in 2011 and will continue to phase in through 2025. The new system replaces locally funded city courts with state-sponsored district courts, presided over by elected judges.
Previously, mayors or city councils appointed their own judges, which meant they also had the authority to fire them if, for instance, they failed to keep sufficient revenue flowing. Such power undermines judicial independence.
Unfortunately, the reforms came too late for Williams. Elsewhere, millions of other people remain vulnerable. Overall, 28 states authorize municipal courts and turn them loose to collect revenue.
Georgetown, a village in rural Louisiana, pulls in more than 90% of its revenue from court fines and fees, and several Oklahoma communities top 70%. “Addicted to Fines,” a report from governing.com, identifies 80 municipalities nationwide that received more than half of their income from fines and fees in 2018.
Dissolving municipal courts or boosting oversight would not end taxation by citation, but it would be a major step in the right direction. People like Williams sometimes make mistakes. When they do, they deserve justice, not extortion.
Joshua House is an attorney, and Daryl James is a writer at the Institute for Justice in Arlington, Virginia.
