The Washington Post

Nearly a decade ago, a federal investigation into the Ferguson, Missouri, police department drew widespread attention to how many municipalities rely on funding from hefty court fees and fines, often resulting from minor automobile-related violations. This encourages aggressive enforcement and leads to modern-day debtor prisons, in which poor people are incarcerated not for any underlying criminal conduct — only for lacking money to afford escalating penalties.

The Obama Justice Department issued guidance aimed at limiting this pervasive and predatory practice. But the Trump administration, under Attorney General Jeff Sessions, rescinded it in 2017. Last month, the Biden Justice Department released a more robust version of the Obama-era memo that lays the groundwork for legal challenges to excessive court fees.

Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta argued that overly burdensome fees and fines violate several constitutional rights: The Eighth Amendment bans cruel and unusual punishment, prohibiting costs that are grossly disproportionate to the severity of the offense; the Sixth Amendment requires due process protections, such as access to counsel, when unpaid fines might lead to jailtime; and the 14th Amendment prohibits incarceration for not paying fees without establishing that failing to do so was willful and considering alternative punishments, she argued.

Unfortunately, the federal government is limited in restricting outrageous fees and fines at the state and local levels. But the Justice Department can use the bully pulpit. The federal government can also condition federal grants on municipalities improving their practices, and the department can support legal challenges by defendants trapped in a spiral of fines and fees. Fortunately, despite the Trump administration’s rollback of the previous guidance, 24 states and D.C. have ended or amended policies that suspend driver’s licenses for unpaid fines and fees since 2016.

This effort is impressively bipartisan. Texas, Louisiana and Oklahoma have eliminated some or all fees charged to youths in the juvenile system. The Fines and Fees Justice Center, working with the American Civil Liberties Union on the left and Americans for Prosperity on the right, launched a national campaign last year called End Justice Fees.

Fines and fees cannot be totally eliminated. A fine is often a good substitute for jailtime. It’s also essential for traffic safety that there be consequences, short of incarceration, for speeding, reckless driving, parking in unauthorized places, cracked windshields, broken taillights, and so forth. And it’s fair to compel citizens who use the justice system to cover some share of its operating costs, especially when they are found guilty or at fault.

But state and local governments cross the line when, first, they fail to consider someone’s ability to pay and, second, they rely on fees to fund extraneous projects and programs unrelated to the court’s functioning. The Justice Department’s 2015 report said policing practices in Ferguson were “shaped by the city’s focus on revenue rather than by public safety needs.” That should never be the case.