Civil rights groups today won an appeal in a federal class action lawsuit that seeks to block the Black Hawk County Sheriff’s office from wrongly extracting money from people before releasing them from jail and from demanding payment under coercive terms. The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals concluded that plaintiffs are harmed by the jail's policy of seizing their money, demanding payment, and forcing them to waive all rights to challenge jail fees.
The sheriff’s office has claimed it is charging these fees for the cost of jail room and board. However, the money has been used to fund a shooting range for the enjoyment of department employees and families, outfitted with laser tag, and ice cream and cotton candy machines.
Also, the fees charged were far higher than what most other Iowa counties charge. And Black Hawk wrongly did not have a judge review the charges to make sure that they were fair and that the person being released was not indigent and unable to pay.
The Eighth Circuit’s decision today noted that, "Iowa law would typically require the County to return any seized money to a released inmate" and the regular "civil reimbursement process requires review by an Iowa court." However, the county did not use a civil reimbursement process. It instead instituted a "written policy compelling inmates to sign a confession of judgment at the time of their release." That policy means people being released have no way to contest the charges and allows the sheriff to get a rubber stamp from the district court clerk, without a judge ever reviewing it.
The signed confessions of judgment provided "no adequate opportunity" for the plaintiffs to challenge the fees they were forced to pay, and the Eighth Circuit noted that the plaintiffs "plausibly allege that they only made post-release payments because they feared the County would file the confessions of judgment." As the court noted, the county never argued that requiring individuals to sign confessions of judgment was not a coercive practice.
In May 2024, the civil rights groups filed a lawsuit challenging the practices of the sheriff’s office and the county collecting these fees without providing any due process of law. It was filed by Public Justice, the ACLU of Iowa, Fredrikson & Byron, PA, and Frerichs Law Office on behalf of clients Leticia (pronounced Luh-TEE-see-uh) Roberts and Calvin Sayers, as well as other individuals who have been forced to sign these unconstitutional agreements before being released from jail and who have had their money taken under the policies in Black Hawk County.
In November 2024, a U.S. district court dismissed the lawsuit. The Eighth Circuit’s ruling today reverses that decision and sends the case back to the district court.
"The county and the sheriff’s office continue to illegally extract this money from individuals trying to transition back into the community after a period of incarceration," said Charles Moore, senior attorney with Public Justice. "Rather than set people like our clients up for success, the county and the sheriff’s office are more interested in lining their own pockets. We are pleased that the Eighth Circuit’s ruling will allow our clients to continue fighting against these unjust and unlawful practices."
"Today’s victory is so important in Iowa, because it will allow our clients to continue our case to try to finally stop this practice in Black Hawk County, and because it sends a message to every other county not to start," said Rita Bettis Austen, ACLU of Iowa Legal Director. "The Black Hawk County Sheriff has been getting people to sign away money they don’t have, and give up rights they shouldn’t give up, by asking them to do so when they have just completed their sentence but before they are free and released from jail—and skirting a process to lawfully try to get jail fees, which is set out in state law. In those circumstances, people getting out of jail have no bargaining power, no attorney, and zero meaningful understanding of what they are doing and what they are giving up. The fact that the money is not even actually used to pay for the room and board or other jail costs that it’s supposedly being assessed for only makes it more outrageous. It’s profoundly unfair and wrong."
Amicus briefs in the case were filed by the Cato Institute, Law School Clinics and Clinical Professors, NAACP Iowa-Nebraska State Area Conference of Branches, and Institute for Justice.
More details on the lawsuit can be found here.
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