Brucker v. City of Doraville
| Decision Date | 24 June 2022 |
| Docket Number | 21-10122 |
| Citation | 38 F.4th 876 |
| Parties | Hilda BRUCKER, Jeffery Thornton, Janice Craig, Byron Billingsley, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. CITY OF DORAVILLE, a Georgia municipal corporation, Defendant-Appellee. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Eleventh Circuit |
Joshua A. House, Institute for Justice, Arlington, VA, William R. Maurer, Institute for Justice, Seattle, WA, Anthony Brian Sanders, Institute for Justice, Minneapolis, MN, Frank B. Strickland, Attorney, Taylor English Duma, LLP, Atlanta, GA, for Plaintiffs-Appellants Hilda Brucker, Jeffery Thornton.
Joshua A. House, Institute for Justice, Arlington, VA, Anthony Brian Sanders, Institute for Justice, Minneapolis, MN, Frank B. Strickland, Attorney, Taylor English Duma, LLP, Atlanta, GA, for Plaintiffs-Appellants Janice Craig, Byron Billingsley.
Harvey S. Gray, Alexandra Joseph, Gray Rust St. Amand Moffett & Brieske, LLP, Atlanta, GA, for Defendant-Appellee.
Micah West, Southern Poverty Law Center, Montgomery, AL, for Amici Curiae Roderick and Solange MacArthur Justice Center, Southern Center for Human Rights, Southern Poverty Law Center, The Fines and Fees Justice Center, The National Police Accountability Project.
Rusi Chandrashkhar Patel, General Counsel, Georgia Municipal Association, Atlanta, GA, for Amicus Curiae Georgia Municipal Association, Inc.
Before Newsom, Branch, and Brasher, Circuit Judges.
The plaintiffs in this lawsuit—Hilda Brucker, Jeffery Thornton, Janice Craig, and Byron Billingsley—accuse the City of Doraville, Georgia, of violating their right to due process. Each of the four plaintiffs received citations from the City for traffic or property code violations, were convicted of those violations, and were ordered to pay fines and fees by the municipal court. They allege that this process presented an unconstitutional risk of bias because the City's budget heavily relies on fines and fees, and this reliance could encourage the judge, prosecutor, and law enforcement agents—all paid by the City—to overzealously enforce the law. The upshot of this risk of bias, they contend, is that the City's financial dependence on fines and fees is unconstitutional. We disagree. It may be unwise for a government to rely on fines and fees to balance its budget. But the importance of fines and fees to a city's budget does not make its procedures for imposing fines and fees unconstitutional. The district court therefore correctly granted summary judgment to the City, and we affirm.
The City of Doraville, Georgia, is governed through its city council, which makes final decisions on its budget. The City mainly uses its general fund to pay for its operations. From 2015 to 2019, roughly 11 to 25 percent of that fund consisted of fines and fees collected through the City's municipal court. That percentage has trended downward over time, and the parties dispute whether it is high compared to those of similar cities. But the City has shown that it considers the municipal court to be an important source of funds. For example, a government newsletter stated that "bringing in over $3 million annually, the court system contributes heavily to the city's bottom line." And when a glitch in the court's scheduling system caused delayed court dates, the City created an "action plan" to "restore municipal court fines and forfeitures to previous levels."
The City's laws are administered in relevant part by four entities: the municipal court, the prosecutor, the police department, and the code enforcement agents.
The municipal court consists of a single judge, and a court clerk manages its operations. The judge's work consists largely of bench trials and sentencing for traffic citations, misdemeanor criminal charges, and city ordinance violations.
The court once employed three judges, but the other two were terminated due to budgetary constraints. The current judge has been in office for twenty-eight years. The City has cut his employment benefits for financial reasons, but he is paid a fixed amount independent of case outcomes. And he believes that he can be terminated only for cause. The judge has very little interaction with other parts of the City government, and he has not spoken to a city council member or the mayor in years. He does not report to or receive direction from anyone within the City. He has no executive authority or input on the City's finances, and he is unaware of how much revenue his court generates. Parties can appeal the municipal court judge's decisions to the Superior Court of DeKalb County. Doraville, Ga., City Charter § 3.05.
The prosecutor is a contractor that serves at the pleasure of the city council. He is paid a fixed amount for every court session. Those sessions occur twice per week. When defendants want to contest or negotiate their citations instead of paying the court clerk, they speak with the prosecutor. If they reject his plea offer, he sends the case to the judge for a bench trial or to state court. The prosecutor does not file cases arising from police citations, and he does not control the court schedule.
In his role as prosecutor, he has no executive responsibility for the City's finances and is not involved in budgetary decisions. He does sometimes share the role of city attorney with his brother. And the city attorney has attended city council meetings where budget documents were discussed. But it is usually the brother that attends those meetings, and his participation focuses on non-budgetary policy matters. The prosecutor has stated that no one has ever directed him to perform his duties in a way that furthers the City's budgetary interests.
The City's police issue citations, file charges, and try their own cases before the municipal court. In recent years, roughly half of the general fund has gone to the police department. The chief of police makes budget proposals for the police department based on its forecasted expenditures. He has stated that the city council has never directed him or his officers to increase enforcement to meet budgetary expectations. Nor has the department used quotas for the number of citations issued.
The City contracts with a private company to enforce its property code. The City periodically renews the contract, and it pays the code enforcement officers at an hourly rate. Through the city manager, the city council can direct the firm to focus on particular priorities. Code enforcement costs much more money than it generates, and revenues from code enforcement amount to less than 10 percent of the fines and forfeitures collected by the City.
Each of the plaintiffs was cited for a traffic or property code violation. They later filed a civil rights action against the City under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and 28 U.S.C. § 2201. They alleged that the City violated their procedural due process rights through biased adjudication, prosecution, and law enforcement.
The City moved to dismiss under Federal Rules of Civil Procedure 12(b)(1) and 12(b)(6), which the district court denied. Both parties later cross-moved for summary judgment. The district court denied the plaintiffs’ motion, granted the City's motion, and entered final judgment. It reasoned that, although the City relies heavily on revenues from fines and fees, the municipal court judge experiences no pressure to generate those revenues and lacks executive authority over finances. It concluded for similar reasons that the prosecutor was not biased, emphasizing that the standard of impartiality is much lower for prosecutors. As for the police, the court did not find a link between fine revenue and police staffing. And it concluded that the City does not direct police operations to increase revenue. Finally, it found that the code enforcement agents were not biased because they generate a small portion of penalty revenue, operate at a loss, and are paid a flat hourly rate. It thus granted summary judgment on all the claims to the City. The plaintiffs then timely filed their notice of appeal.
This Court reviews the district court's grant of summary judgment de novo , "construing the facts and drawing all reasonable inferences in favor of the nonmoving party." Fernandez v. Trees, Inc. , 961 F.3d 1148, 1152 (11th Cir. 2020). Summary judgment is proper if "there is no genuine dispute as to any material fact and the movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law." Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(a). "If no reasonable jury could return a verdict in favor of the nonmoving party, there is no genuine issue of material fact and summary judgment will be granted." Morton v. Kirkwood , 707 F.3d 1276, 1284 (11th Cir. 2013) (quoting Beal v. Paramount Pictures Corp. , 20 F.3d 454, 459 (11th Cir. 1994) ).
It is undisputed that the City raises a substantial percentage of its funds by imposing fines and fees for traffic violations and the like. There is no doubt, therefore, that the City as a governmental entity has an actual financial interest in imposing fines and fees—it gets the money. So the question for us is: Does the City's financial interest create an actual bias or a constitutionally unacceptable risk of bias that transfers to the City's employees? Specifically, the plaintiffs argue that the municipal court judge, the prosecutor, the police officers, and the code enforcement agents all were infected with a risk of bias that violated the plaintiffs’ due process rights. The City argues that its interest in revenue is not transferable to its individual employees, especially its judge. We examine each of these municipal employees in turn.1
We'll start with the judge. Under the Due Process Clause, the plaintiffs were entitled to an "impartial and disinterested tribunal." Harper v. Pro. Prob. Servs. Inc. , 976 F.3d 1236, 1241 (11th Cir. 2020) (quoting Marshall v. Jerrico, Inc. , 446 U.S....
To continue reading
Request your trial