No booking fees without hearings, federal judge says

SPOKANE — A state law that allowed counties to collect as much as $100 in booking fees from jail inmates was struck down this week by a federal judge who ruled it violated constitutional protections for due process.

U.S. District Judge Fred Van Sickle on Tuesday struck down Spokane County's $89.12 booking fee and the state statute that authorized it. Van Sickle issued a 15-page order saying the county must conduct a hearing before taking money from citizens.

Several other counties that collect similar fees were closely watching the outcome of the case, including Pierce, Franklin, Snohomish, Thurston and Whatcom.

"Across the state, county jails collect millions of dollars from prisoners without a hearing and before they've been convicted," said Breean Beggs of the Center for Justice in Spokane, a nonprofit that represented a man who challenged the fee. "This ends that practice."

The next step will be to determine how much money Spokane County collected, and how to repay that money, Beggs said. He estimated the county would have to repay more than $2 million.

The fees were authorized by the Legislature in 1999 at $10, and the limit was raised to $100 in 2003. The money was to be taken involuntarily from a person at the time of booking.

Timothy Ford of the state Attorney General's Office said his office had not decided whether to appeal. The lawsuit did not challenge the fees, only whether they could be collected without a hearing, Ford said.

Ford said all counties in the state had the power to charge fees for the actual costs of booking people into jails. The fees could not be higher than $100, he said.

"What was remarkable about it is it takes debt collection to a new level," Beggs said, saying jailers would confiscate the wallets of inmates and remove the money for the booking fee. An inmate would have to prove later that charges were dropped or that he had been acquitted, in order to get a refund, Beggs said.

The lawsuit was filed in June 2005 against Spokane County on behalf of Shawn Huss. He was booked into jail in October 2004 on a domestic-violence complaint, assessed a booking fee and released the following day with no charges ever being filed.

His money was not returned, the Center for Justice said.

The other counties that have continued to collect booking fees after being asked to stop may also be liable for refunds, Beggs said.