Pending before the Court are the CPS Defendants' Motion to Dismiss (Doc. No. 369), Plaintiffs' Response (Doc. No. 387), and the CPS Defendants' Reply (Doc. No. 393). Also pending before the Court are the CPS Defendants' Motion to Dismiss Certain Claims for Lack of Subject Matter Jurisdiction (Doc. No. 374), Plaintiffs' Response (Doc. No. 389), and the CPS Defendants' Reply (Doc. No. 394).
The PSI Defendants have filed a Notice (Doc. No. 384), requesting they be allowed to join the Motion to Dismiss for Lack of Subject Matter Jurisdiction (Doc. No. 374) with regards to Plaintiff Tanya Mitchell's claims for injunctive relief. The request to join is GRANTED.
For the reasons set forth herein, the Motion to Dismiss Certain Claims for Lack of Subject Matter Jurisdiction (Doc. No. 374) is DENIED, and the Motion to Dismiss (Doc. No. 369) is GRANTED in part, and DENIED in part. Accordingly, Count 1 (the RICO claim); Count 5 (the due process claim for damages); Count 9 (the equal protection claim for damages); Count 10 (the equal protection claim for equitable relief); and Count 13 (the equal protection and due process claim for damages) are dismissed. Count 6 (the due process claim for equitable relief); Count 14 (the equal protection and due process claim for equitable relief); Count 16 (the unjust enrichment claim); Counts 19 and 20 (the abuse of process claims); and Count 24 (the civil conspiracy claim) remain for trial.
II. FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND Plaintiffs Karen McNeil, Lesley Johnson, Tanya Mitchell,1 Indya Hilfort, and Lucinda Brandon allege they are indigent individuals who have been placed on probation for misdemeanor offenses by the Giles County courts, and that their probation is supervised by one of the two named private probation companies. (Doc. Nos. 41, 256). Plaintiffs McNeil, Johnson, and Hilfort allege they have been supervised by the "CPS Defendants" or "CPS" (Community Probation Services, LLC, Community Probation Services, L.L.C., Community Probation Services, and Patricia McNair). Plaintiffs Mitchell and Brandon allege they have been supervised by "the PSI Defendants" or "PSI" (Progressive Sentencing, Inc., PSI-Probation II, LLC, PSI-Probation, L.L.C., Tennessee Correctional Services, LLC, Timothy Cook, Markeyta Bledsoe, and Harriet Thompson). Plaintiffs assert constitutional claims, claims brought under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act ("RICO"), and state law claims against the CPS Defendants and the PSI Defendants. Plaintiffs assert constitutional and state law claims against Giles County and Sheriff Kyle Helton. The named Plaintiffs seek to represent a class to obtain damages and injunctive relief on their claims.
As an overview to their claims, Plaintiffs allege as follows:
1. This class action lawsuit challenges systemic constitutional and statutory violations and an illegal extortion scheme in Giles County, Tennessee, which has allowed two for-profit companies - Community Probation Services, LLC and PSI Probation, LLC - to transform the County's misdemeanor probation system into a machine for generating their own profit on the backs of Giles County's most impoverished residents. The named plaintiffs and the members of the putative plaintiff classes (collectively 'Plaintiffs') in this case live in poverty and were assigned to supervised probation with one of the Defendant companies. They are victims of the Defendants' conspiracy to extract as much money as possible from impoverished misdemeanor probationers through a pattern of illegal racketeering activity, including threats of arrest and jailing, physical confinement, and extended periods of supervised probation due to nonpayment of debts owed to the court and to the private companies.
2. The goal of CPS and PSI (collectively, the 'private companies' or the 'companies') is to maximize their own profits by acting as probation officers for the purpose of collecting fines, costs, fees, and litigation taxes (these legal financial obligations will be referred to collectively as 'court debts') owed to the court following convictions for minor misdemeanor offenses. Pursuant to their respective contracts with the County (the 'Contracts'), the companies add their own fees and surcharges on top of those court debts and continue to supervise the collection of even greater amounts of money from probationers who cannot afford to pay their debts. These fees and surcharges - which probationers pay directly to the companies - are the companies' only sources of revenue under their Contracts.
3. The supervision the companies provide, however, consists almost exclusively of continuous and repeated threats of jailing, humiliating abuses of power such as invasive drug screens during which employees of the companies observe probationers urinating (and the companies, in their discretion, then charge fees for each drug test that they decide to administer), and repeated revocations and extensions of probation for not making payments that the companies and their employees ('private probation officers' or 'for-profit probation officers'; collectively, the companies and their employees are referred to as 'Private Defendants') know the probationers cannot afford. All of this occurs while the companies continue to impose additional monthly fees and surcharges, and the probationers' debts mount.
4. In addition to providing substantial revenue to the County, the contractual arrangements give Giles County's private probation officers, who should be neutral officers of the court, a direct financial stake in every aspect of misdemeanor probation supervision. This financial conflict of interest, baked into the companies' contracts with the County and the companies' written andunwritten policies, causes a cycle of debt; arrest and jailing for inability to pay that debt; additional fees for those arrests; repeated revocation and extension of supervised probation for nonpayment; and crushing, inescapable poverty.
5. As a result of these extortionate enterprises, individuals who are supervised by the companies, including the named plaintiffs, have lost homes, jobs, and personal belongings; suffered severe medical problems, sold their blood plasma, and gone without food, clothing, and medicine for themselves and their children; taken out high-interest loans and borrowed money from friends and family members who are themselves struggling to afford the basic necessities of life; and diverted public benefits - including social security disability checks, or whatever minimal income they have - to instead pay the escalating supervision fees that the companies demand under threat of arrest and jailing. These policies and practices have trapped Plaintiffs and hundreds of people like them in Giles County in a web of fear and panic for years.
6. The companies' user-funded model of probation - in which the probation officer's only sources of income and profit under the Contracts are the payments made by the impoverished probationers the County assigns to them for probation supervision - violates the Constitution and has no place in our legal system. This lawsuit seeks to recover damages from the alleged wrongdoers here, disgorge their ill-gotten profits, and to end the practice of for-profit misdemeanor probation in Giles County administered by private companies with financial incentives to place and keep persons on probation.
(Doc. No. 256 ¶¶ 1-6) (footnotes omitted).
Plaintiffs' claims are summarized below:
(Due Process) Johnson, & Indya Hilfort County 6 42 U.S.C. § 1983(Due Process) Indya Hilfort CPS corporatedefendants & GilesCounty EquitableRelief 7 42 U.S.C. § 1983(Due Process) Lucinda Brandon &Tanya Mitchell PSI corporate defendants& Giles County Damages 8 42 U.S.C. § 1983(Due Process) Tanya Mitchell PSI corporate defendants& Giles County EquitableRelief 9 42 U.S.C. § 1983(Equal Protection) Karen McNeil, LesleyJohnson, & Indya Hilfort CPS corporatedefendants Damages 10 42 U.S.C. § 1983(Equal Protection) Indya Hilfort CPS corporatedefendants & GilesCounty EquitableRelief 11 42 U.S.C. § 1983(Equal Protection) Lucinda Brandon &Tanya Mitchell PSI corporate defendants& Giles County Damages 12 42 U.S.C. § 1983(Equal Protection) Tanya Mitchell PSI corporate defendants& Giles County EquitableRelief 13 42 U.S.C. § 1983(Equal Protectionand Due Process) Karen McNeil, LesleyJohnson, & Indya Hilfort CPS corporatedefendants & GilesCounty Damages 14 42 U.S.C. § 1983(Equal Protectionand Due Process) Indya Hilfort CPS corporatedefendants & GilesCounty EquitableRelief 15 42 U.S.C. § 1983(Equal Protectionand Due Process) Indya Hilfort Giles County & SheriffKyle Helton EquitableRelief 16 Unjust Enrichment Karen McNeil & LesleyJohnson CPS corporatedefendants Damages 17 Unjust Enrichment Lucinda Brandon &Tanya Mitchell PSI corporate defendants Damages 18 Unjust Enrichment Tanya Mitchell PSI corporate defendants EquitableRelief
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