The lawsuit, filed Sunday night on the eve of the six-month anniversary of the police shooting of Michael Brown, alleges that the city violates the Constitution by jailing people without adequately considering whether they were indigent and, as a result, unable to pay.
The suit is filed on behalf of 11 plaintiffs who say they were too poor to pay but were then jailed — sometimes for two weeks or more.
NPR got an advance look at the lawsuit, filed by lawyers from Equal Justice Under Law, ArchCity Defenders and the Saint Louis University School of Law. It charges that Ferguson officials "have built a municipal scheme designed to brutalize, to punish, and to profit."
In 2013, Ferguson collected $2.6 million in court fines and fees, mainly on traffic violations and other low-level municipal offenses. That was the city's second-largest source of income, or about 21 percent of its total budget.
The lawsuit challenges the practice of jailing people when they can't afford to pay those fines. When tickets go unpaid, people are summoned to court and usually offered a new payment plan. If they fail to show up or make the new payments, the city issues an arrest warrant.
People line up to take part in an amnesty program to clear up outstanding misdemeanor arrest warrants in August 2013, in Ferguson, Mo. For those living on the economic margins, the consequences of even a minor criminal violation can lead to a spiral of debt, unpaid obligations, unemployment and even arrest.
A line of people wait to speak during a meeting of the Ferguson City Council on Tuesday. The meeting was the first for the council since the fatal shooting of Michael Brown by a city police officer.
The proliferation of court fees has prompted some states, like New Jersey, to use amnesty programs to encourage the thousands of people who owe fines to surrender in exchange for fee reductions. At the Fugitive Safe Surrender program, makeshift courtrooms allow judges to individually handle each case.
In 2013, Ferguson, a city with a population of 21,000, issued nearly 33,000 arrest warrants for unpaid traffic violations and other minor offenses. Many of those were for people who lived outside of the city.\
Ferguson officials did not respond to requests for comment. But the city has made some recent court reforms. In September, the City Council, in its first meeting since the Brown shooting, announced a proposal to cap revenues from tickets. And in December, the city ordered a partial "amnesty." People could pay $100 to get an arrest warrant lifted and then agree to pay their fines on a new payment plan.
Last year, NPR's investigative series Guilty and Charged revealed that all 50 states add long lists of fines and fees for court services including the cost of a public defender, and room and board for jail stays. The investigation also found that when the poor struggle to pay those fees — often with penalties that push costs to hundreds or thousands of dollars — they are sent to jail for not paying the fines, even though debtors prisons were outlawed before the Civil War.
