San Mateo Court Sued Over Traffic Violation Charges

By Joe Dworetzky, Bay City News Foundation

SAN MATEO COUNTY, CA — An unusual lawsuit filed Thursday in the Superior Court of Alameda County names the Superior Court of San Mateo County as one of the defendants.

The plaintiffs claim the San Mateo court improperly imposes a $300 "assessment" whenever a person fails to timely respond to a traffic infraction or similar citation.

The suit was filed on behalf of plaintiffs Anthony McCree and the Debt Collective, a national organization that challenges consumer debt. McCree said he was traveling to a job interview when he was cited for fare evasion on public transit. McCree, who was homeless at the time, missed his payment and the court automatically charged him the $300 fee. He found housing in Alameda County, but received notices from the San Mateo court that that he owed a total $860, even though the base fine for fare evasion is $250 at the maximum.

The plaintiffs maintain the assessments are big business for the court. Over a three-year period, the court allegedly imposed assessments in more than 80,000 individual cases. During that period, the amounts assessed exceeded $9 million a year.

The lawsuit aims to cancel tens of millions of dollars in outstanding charges and enjoin San Mateo from continuing the practice in the future.

The assessments generally arise after a driver is given a traffic citation in San Mateo County and receives a "Notice of Bail" from the Court. The notice gives the violator a choice: They can pay the fine in full and thereby avoid a hearing. Alternatively, the violator can call and arrange a hearing date where he or she may contest the citation.

According to the complaint, many violators fail to do either. In that situation the court treats the failure to respond to mean that the alleged violator wants the court to resolve the matter without a hearing. The court then resolves the matter — generally by ruling against the violator - and imposes, in addition to the fine, a $300 assessment for failure to respond.

If the violator fails to pay the fine and assessment, the court, according to the plaintiffs' complaint, "maximizes revenue collection" by using the legal procedures of "wage garnishment, property liens, and bank liens" to collect the debt.

Frequently the court refers charges to private collection agencies.

A significant portion of the lawsuit is devoted to allegations that the San Mateo court has a vested interest in imposing the assessments, because a portion of the funds collected go into the court's budget. According to plaintiffs, the court is permitted to retain all assessments collected in excess of $2.1 million plus the costs of collection.

In response to public records requests by plaintiffs, the court stated that it had been able to retain more than $3 million over the most three recent fiscal years. Given the court's annual budget of approximately $50 million in fiscal 2020-21, plaintiffs contend that the amounts are such a significant source of revenue for the court as to create a conflict of interest.

The lawsuit also alleges that that the courts' obtained authority to impose assessments because of California's "Three Strikes" legislation dramatically overfilled prison facilities throughout the state and lead to a financial crisis for the court system's budget.

Plaintiffs say the California legislature solved the financial problem, not by increasing the court's funding from the state treasury, but by allowing the courts to impose the assessments and retain the funds recovered.

The plaintiffs are being represented by attorneys with the ACLU Foundation of Northern California, the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area, Bay Area Legal Aid, and Fenwick & West LLP.

According to Zal K. Shroff, one of plaintiffs' attorneys, it is a "pretty perverse practice" and one that has a disparate impact on people of color.

Shroff says, "in San Mateo County alone, black drivers are twice as likely to be stopped than white drivers." That means, he says, that black and brown drivers are "being made to pay for California's misguided mass incarceration era policies that were already hurting their communities."

The complaint challenges the assessments on numerous grounds in addition to the conflict of interest issue. The complaint says that the statute does not require assessments but simply allows them at the discretion of a judicial officer. The San Mateo court allegedly imposes the penalties automatically without any discretion being employed.

The complaint also argues that the practice violates the defendants' due process rights by failing to timely and adequately inform them of their right to challenge the assessment or avoid it altogether simply by requesting that the citation be resolved without a hearing, a practice allowed in traffic violation matters.

According to Shroff, the suit is the first in California to challenge the assessment practice. While the new suit is not a class action, Shroff says that if relief is granted it will help many people affected by the assessment practice.

San Mateo allegedly referred more than 100,000 cases to collection in the last three years. Plaintiffs want to enjoin all collection of those assessments and stop any further improper assessments in the future.

Requests for comment on the suit by the San Mateo court and its counsel were not promptly returned.

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