Eleventh Circuit denies class certification to hundreds of people unlawfully jailed in debtors’ prison for inability to pay traffic fines, and makes class certification virtually impossible in many circumstances.
The Issue: The city of Montgomery, Alabama regularly assigned traffic offenders who did not pay their fines to probation administered by a private, for-profit probation company who charged probationers a monthly fee until they could no longer pay, at which point they were thrown in jail. A district court found that, by systematically jailing offenders for non-payment without determining whether they were able to pay, Montgomery violated their due process and equal protection rights not to be incarcerated for poverty. However, the court then denied class certification to imprisoned offenders on the ground that class membership was not ascertainable, i.e., it would not be feasible to determine who qualified for the class. The prisoners filed a petition for interlocutory review in the Court of Appeal.
Why It Matters: Hundreds of lives of already impoverished people, most of them Black, were upended by the appalling practice of being made to pay for the privilege of probation, followed by incarceration. But the very indigency which led to their incarceration also made it unfeasible for hundreds of unjustly imprisoned people to bring individual lawsuits. Therefore, a class action was the only viable way for them to obtain justice and the only viable way to hold the city and the probation company accountable. Moreover, allowing the denial of certification to stand would set a precedent making it likewise unfeasible for many thousands of similarly situated to victims to obtain legal recourse – at the time of the litigated events, the probation company was supervising close to 40,000 probationers under similar circumstances throughout Georgia and Alabama. In fact the inappropriately high bar set for class certification would make it prohibitively difficult to bring class actions in many circumstances.
Public Good’s Contribution: Public Good filed a brief in the Eleventh Circuit in support of the petition for interlocutory review of the denial of class certification. Public Good argued that the district court had committed an outcome-determinative abuse of discretion calling for interlocutory review by treating administrative feasibility – including the ability to ascertain class members – as a threshold requirement for class certification, rather than as one factor to be weighed, which is the correct legal standard. The court compounded the error by in effect requiring that class members be identified at the outset as a condition of class certification, and still further by requiring an unreasonably high level of proof for each class member; the court thereby set a standard that hardly any proposed classes could meet.
Amici represented by Public Good: Public Good’s brief was filed on behalf of the Southern Poverty Law Center, Civil Rights Corps, law professors, and itself.
Outcome: After the briefs supporting interlocutory relief were filed, the Court of Appeal ruled in another case that administrative feasibility was not a threshold requirement for class certification. Cherry v. Dometic Corp., 986 F.3d 1296 (11th Cir. 2021). It then granted the petition for interlocutory review in this case, vacating the district court decision, and remanding for reconsideration in light of Cherry. But victory was short-lived. The district court again denied class certification, and the denial was upheld by the Court of Appeal.
Cases Nos. 2:15-cv-463-RCL (M.D. Ala. July 7, 2020), 2:15-cv-555-RCL (M.D. Ala. July 7, 2020), vacated and remanded, No. 21-90003-H (11th Cir. Feb. 3, 2021), and on remand Nos. 2:15-cv-463-RCL (M.D. Ala. May 21, 2021), 2:15-cv-555-RCL (M.D. Ala. May 21, 2021), and affirmed 108 F.4th 1334 (11th Cir. July 26, 2024).
Download our brief filed in McCullough v. City of Montgomery and Carter v. City of Montgomery.