Americans Now Being Imprisoned If They Are Too Poor to Pay Tickets

AUSTIN, Texas (CN) – Austin, Texas is the latest city to face a federal class action accusing it of reinstituting debtors’ prisons by jailing people who are too poor to pay fines for traffic tickets and petty misdemeanors.

Such lawsuits have mushroomed in the past year, in the aftermath of the protests of the white-on-black police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo. Ferguson and several neighboring cities were accused of targeting black drivers for traffic stops, and jailing them, and “debtors’ prisons” lawsuits have sprouted all over the United States. They typically challenge the constitutionality of a local jurisdiction’s practice of jailing people who cannot afford to pay fines for petty offenses, and attribute it in part to racial discrimination.



Such lawsuits have been filed against Georgia; New Orleans; San Francisco ; Benton County, Wash.; Alexander City, Ala.; Douglas County, (Omaha) Neb.; and Jennings, Mo., a neighbor of Ferguson. Ferguson agreed to stop doing it after receiving a scorching report from the Department of Justice.

In the Austin lawsuit, lead plaintiffs Valerie Gonzales and Maria Salazar say Austin violated their rights to counsel, due process, and equal protection.

Debtors’ prisons “create a racially skewed, two-tiered system of justice in which the poor receive harsher, longerpunishments for committing the same crimes as the rich, simply because they are poor,” according to the American Civil Liberties Union, which has taken on such cases elsewhere.

Lead plaintiff Gonzales says the Austin Municipal Court jailed her in August because she failed to pay traffic tickets accumulated over nine years. Gonzales, who takes care of five disabled children, was unemployed when she was arrested and living near the federal poverty line.