Alabama
DOJ: Lawsuit should proceed over town’s police fines
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) — The Justice Department is urging a federal judge to let a class-action lawsuit go forward against an Alabama town accused of policing for profit with excessive fines and aggressive enforcement of local laws.
The U.S. attorney’s office this week filed a statement of interest in the civil lawsuit against Brookside. The lawsuit was filed by four people who paid hundred of dollars in fines and said they were humiliated by what they described as a scheme to boost town revenue.
Brookside is seeking to dismiss the lawsuit. The Justice Department argued that it should proceed against the police department and local officials.
“Courts, prosecutors, and police should be driven by justice—not revenue,” an assistant U.S. attorney wrote in the court filing.
The Justice Department said the United States has an interest in enforcing federal laws regarding the imposition and enforcement of unlawful fines and fees. “The United States also has an interest in addressing practices that punish people for their poverty, in violation of their constitutional rights.”
Al.com reported in January that Brookside, which has a population of 1,253, saw revenue from fines and forfeitures jump 640 percent between 2018 and 2020 and grew to make up half the city’s total income.
Lawyers for the town, in seeking to dismiss the case, wrote in a court filing that, “very little is necessary to show that the fines and fees imposed by the Town of Brookside and/or the Brookside Municipal Court are rationally related to a governmental interest.”
Institute for Justice, a group representing the plaintiffs in the case, welcomed the Justice Department action.
“The Justice Department’s statement recognizes that Brookside’s abusive system of policing for profit violates the Constitution, and that the town should be held accountable,” Jaba Tsitsuashvili, a lawyer with the group, said in a statement.
New York
U.S. court sides with state in fight over school vaccine rules
NEW YORK (AP) — A federal appeals court ruled Friday against a group of New York parents who sued after the state made it more difficult for children to get a medical exemption from school immunization requirements, which were tightened after a major measles outbreak in 2019.
The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a lower court’s dismissal of a lawsuit filed by families and Children’s Health Defense, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s anti-vaccine group.
The lawsuit challenged state rules adopted in 2019 that did away with religious exemptions for vaccines and narrowed eligibility for medical exemptions down to children with just a few rare conditions, like severe allergic reactions to a previous dose of vaccine or certain, severe immune system diseases. The state’s allowed exemptions follow guidelines from a federal advisory panel.
The families argued the regulations violated their rights because school officials could deny requests on behalf of vulnerable children even when a doctor certified a medical need for an exemption.
The appeals panel rejected that argument, writing in the decision that “the new regulations require requests to comply with evidence-based national standards for the purpose of ensuring that physicians do not recommend medical exemptions in conclusory fashion or for non-medical reasons.”
New York’s longstanding vaccination rules don’t include a mandate for children to get vaccinated against COVID-19.
Sujata Gibson, an attorney for the plaintiffs, who hailed from a variety of school districts around the state, said she was disappointed in the decision.
“The real question here is: Who decides when you are looking at medical exemptions?” she said. “Is it the treating physician, or is it the school principal?”
Resistance to vaccines helped fuel a measles outbreak that sickened nearly 1,300 people in 2019, the highest number of cases reported in the U.S. since 1992.
Vaccine hesitancy persists in some of the New York communities that were the epicenter of that outbreak. Earlier this month, health officials in Rockland County, northwest of New York City, reported that an unvaccinated young adult had become infected with polio in the first U.S. case of the disease in nearly a decade.
Mississippi
Federal judge seizes control of jail
JACKSON, Miss (AP) — A federal judge has seized control of a Mississippi jail after citing “severely deficient” conditions at the facility.
In a Friday ruling, U.S. Southern District of Mississippi Judge Carlton Reeves placed Hinds County’s Raymond Detention Center in Raymond into receivership. The judge will soon appoint an expert, known as a “receiver,” to temporarily manage the facility in hopes of improving its conditions.
“After ample time and opportunity, regretfully, it is clear that the county is incapable, or unwilling, to handle its affairs,” the judge wrote. “Additional intervention is required. It is time to appoint a receiver.”
Reeves said that deficiencies in supervision and staffing lead to “a stunning array of assaults, as well as deaths.” Seven individuals died last year while detained at the jail, he said.
County officials said they’re still digesting the order and are determining whether they will appeal, WLBT-TV reported.
Federal and state judges have ordered receiverships or a similar transfer of control for prisons and jails only about eight times, according to Hernandez Stroud, an attorney at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law.
The details governing the receivership will be decided by Reeves.
“What this receivership order looks like is totally within the court’s discretion,” Stroud said. “What powers to give the receiver, how long the receivership should last — those are matters that Judge Reeves will figure out.”
Reeves wrote in his decision that the facility’s staffing levels are “particularly egregious.”
“Persistent shortcomings in staffing and supervision embolden gangs and encourage the prevalent circulation of contraband, including narcotics and weapons,” Reeves wrote. “Jail staff continue to receive inadequate training regarding use of force, such as the use of tasers.”
He also wrote that cell doors still do not lock and a lack of lighting in cells makes life “miserable for the detainees who live there and prevents guards from adequately surveilling detainees.” He also said that guards sometimes turn to sleeping instead of manning the cameras in the control room.
Reeves’ decision comes months after he agreed to scale back the county’s jail 2016 consent decree with the federal government to address “unconstitutional conditions” at Raymond and two other facilities that comprise the Hinds County jail system.
