The practice actually isn’t new with the Indiana case.
IJ pointed out the Justice Department has determined that city officials in Pagdale, Missouri, have “consistently set maximizing revenue as the priority for … law enforcement activity.”
The city’s roughly 3,000 residents, IJ said, have been “heavily fined for trivial offenses like missing curtains, aging paint, walking on the left side of crosswalks, and enjoying a beer within 150 feet of a grill.”
“And in Charlestown, Indiana, local officials imposed crippling fines on low-income homeowners to force them to sell their land to a private developer.”
Scott Bullock, president and general counsel of the Institute for Justice, said the case “will make constitutional history.”
“Governments increasingly use excessive fines and fees, including through the pernicious practice of civil forfeiture, to fund law enforcement agencies and to pad city budgets,” he said. “This is not just an ominous trend; it is a dangerous one. This case has the potential to give meaningful protection to individuals in every state in the land from these abuses and to limit government’s ability to turn law enforcement into revenue generators.”
The Eighth Amendment’s requirements are simple: “Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.”
The position requested from the U.S. Supreme Court, the pleading argues, already has been adopted in the Eighth and Ninth circuits, as well as the supreme courts in Alabama, California, Delaware, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Utah and West Virginia.