This interview will be on “St. Louis on the Air” over the noon hour Thursday. This story will be updated after the show. You can listen live.
In 2015, a cohort of lawyers sued the city of Ferguson to stop municipal court abuses widely publicized after the killing of Michael Brown the previous August.
ArchCity Defenders, the Saint Louis University School of Law Legal Clinics, and the Campbell Law Firm filed on behalf of Roelif Carter, a Ferguson resident charged with court fees that the suit argued were illegal. In the class-action lawsuit, Carter stood in for nearly 10,000 people harmed by the city’s revenue generating practices.
Five years later, St. Louis County Circuit Judge Joseph Dueker approved a settlement of $1,699,405 to be distributed among Carter and the class as a partial return for the exploitative warrant and failure to appear fees they were charged by Ferguson’s municipal court from 2009 through the present.
On Thursday’s’s St. Louis on the Air, host Sarah Fenske will be joined by Michael-John Voss. He is a co-founder and special projects director with ArchCity Defenders. They’ll delve into the litigation, which was one of ArchCity’s longest cases to date, and how the three court fees charged by Ferguson — failure to appear, warrant recall and letter fees — are unconstitutional.
Have a question or comment about this topic? Tweet us (@STLonAir), send an email to talk@stlpublicradio.org or share your thoughts via our St. Louis on the Air Facebook group, and help inform our coverage.
“St. Louis on the Air” brings you the stories of St. Louis and the people who live, work and create in our region. The show is hosted by Sarah Fenske and produced by Alex Heuer, Emily Woodbury, Evie Hemphill, Lara Hamdan and Joshua Phelps. The engineer is Aaron Doerr and production assistance is provided by Charlie McDonald.
Send questions and comments about this story to feedback@stlpublicradio.org.
Copyright 2021 St. Louis Public Radio. To see more, visit St. Louis Public Radio. 9(MDA3OTgyNDI4MDEzMTM0MjQzMTZlNDI0Mg004))