(Radio Iowa) – A federal appeals court has ruled a lawsuit against Black Hawk County for fees charged to jail inmates can proceed. The A-C-L-U and the legal advocacy group Public Justice sued the county in 2024 on behalf of two people who were charged a total of more than four-thousand dollars in jail fees. The suit claimed the sheriff’s office made them sign a document before being released, promising to pay the fees. A-C-L-U of Iowa legal director Rita Bettis Austen says people often don’t know they can challenge the fees.
“People getting out of jail in these circumstances simply have no bargaining power,” Bettis Austen says. “They don’t have an attorney, they have zero meaningful understanding of what it is they’re doing when they’re signing away these rights, and what they’re giving up.” The suit claimed the sheriff’s office was forcing inmates to sign a document promising to pay fees amounting to 95-dollars for each day spent in jail. Senior attorney Charles Moore, with Public Justice, says the fees are a bad idea to begin with.
“All data that we have and all the studies indicate that going to jail, going to prison, is an incredibly disruptive life event,” Moore says. “People can lose their housing, lose their jobs, lose their family connections. And so it doesn’t set people up for success by demanding that they make these payments with money that they don’t have.” Iowa law allows counties to charge jail inmates to help cover the cost of room and board. The Black Hawk County Sheriff’s Office has said signing the document before release was optional.
The case now heads back to federal district court.
