Challenge to City of Austin’s Practice of Jailing Indigent Persons Who Could Not Pay Petty Fines

Gonzales v. Salazar

Lawyers from Drinker Biddle along with lawyers from the Texas Fair Defense, the University of Texas Civil Rights Clinic, and the Susman Godfrey firm in Houston, Texas under the auspices of the Barbara McDowell Fondation brought a class action against the City of Austin in a case styled Gonzales v. Salazar asserting that its practice of incarcerating individuals for failure to pay their debts for fines and fees for petty misdemeanors, such as traffic tickets, without legal representation was unconstitutional in violation of the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitutions which protected their rights to counsel, due process, and equal protection.

Efforts continued in 2016 to reform the City of Austin’s practice of jailing individuals for failing to pay fines for petty misdemeanors and traffic tickets and failing to appoint counsel to those subject to those penalties. The action brought in the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas  was amended and refiled as Harris v. City of Austin. The district court dismissed that action without prejudice on March 16, 2016. The district court’s ruling does not prevent a new filing on behalf of a different plaintiff, but since the court’s ruling, the litigation team has been working with a broad coalition on local legislative reforms to end the process of jailing individuals for petty misdemeanors and traffic tickets and to appoint counsel for those individuals.