2021 Update
The Foundation's $40,000 grant in 2019 enabled NCLEJ to play the lead role in a significant class action entitled McCullough v. City of Montgomery. This case challenges a series of interwoven policies and practices of the City of Montgomery, Alabama, designed to increase municipal budgets at the expense of low-income people of color. The City does this by repeatedly ticketing them, subjecting them to coercive private "probation" schemes, jailing them when they could not pay, and forcing them to work while jailed to pay off their debt.
The case was initially filed by a retired law professor and a well-known but under-resourced civil rights law firm. They survived motions to dismiss through the 11th Circuit but lacked the resources to pursue the surviving claims through discovery, summary judgment, and trial. Without the support from NCLEJ and the additional pro bono resources we secured from Dentons, the litigation could not have survived.
The McCullough litigation challenges discriminatory policing and debt collection practices that have subjected communities of color in Alabama to unreasonable intrusion and relentless revenue harvesting. Though previous lawsuits have challenged some of this same conduct, those lawsuits never succeeded in forcing the City to change its practices, and the City and its contractor have never been held accountable to the thousands of people harmed by these unlawful and discriminatory practices.
During the grant year, NCLEJ engaged in intensive litigation on a highly compressed schedule. We completed discovery in three months, after which we immediately began summary judgment briefing, a Herculean effort involving full-time effort from almost every member of NCLEJ's staff. We survived summary judgment and proceeded to class certification alongside a companion case, Carter v. City of Montgomery.
The district court ruled in July 2020 that the case could proceed to trial on claims for damages for violations of federal constitutional due process, equal protection rights and state tort law prohibiting false imprisonment and abuse of process. Since July 2020, NCLEJ and their partners have focused on obtaining class certification and are awaiting decision on their second appeal of a denial of class certification.
2022 Update
As previously reported, the parties initially briefed class certification during the summer of 2020, culminating in a two-day evidentiary hearing. On December 24, 2020, the district court denied class certification because we did not have an administratively feasible method of identifying class members. Still, we successfully appealed to the Eleventh Circuit, which reversed, sending the case back to the district court. In May 2021, the district court again denied class certification, and we sought leave to appeal.
Since our last report, the Eleventh Circuit granted our motion for leave to appeal, and a briefing is underway. There has been no significant media coverage or court decisions since our last report.
Click here to see the original grant, including the six-month and year-end reports.