The Supreme Court has agreed to look at class-action lawsuits filed by two women whose automobiles were seized by local governments even though they committed no crimes.
The women said they were deprived of due process by two municipalities in Alabama that failed to properly justify their actions. The women filed suit in federal court.
The Supreme Court issued an unsigned order on April 17 in the case. No justices dissented from the decision to hear the case. For a petition to move to oral argument, at least four of the nine justices have to vote in the affirmative.
The new case deals with civil asset forfeiture (CAF), which has long been criticized by civil libertarians. CAF is a legal procedure in which law enforcement officials take assets from people suspected of criminal or illegal activity without necessarily charging the owners with wrongdoing. Often the owners are required to prove the asset was not involved in criminal or illegal activity. Failing that, the government keeps the property.
In the case at hand, petitioner Halima Tariffa Culley’s automobile was seized by the city of Satsuma, Alabama, when her son was arrested while using it. She filed a federal class-action lawsuit in federal district court claiming the city and the state violated her 14th Amendment rights by failing to provide her with a prompt post-deprivation hearing. Such a hearing, she argues, should have determined whether the vehicle should be retained by the state pending the disposition of the case against her son and whether continued impoundment of the car was “the least restrictive way for the State to secure its interest in the vehicle during the pendency of the Civil Asset Forfeiture … proceeding filed against her.”
The city referred the matter to the state, which made Culley a defendant in a case it brought under Alabama’s CAF statute. Culley moved for summary judgment and the state court granted it, ordering the car returned to her because she was deemed an innocent owner of the vehicle that was not subject to forfeiture under state law.
Petitioner Lena Sutton filed a federal class-action lawsuit against the town of Leesburg, Alabama, claiming she had been improperly deprived of her car and that, like Culley, she was not given a prompt post-deprivation hearing at which the state would have to show probable cause. Before that, Sutton won her case in state court and showed she was an innocent owner who did not participate in or have knowledge of the use of the vehicle in a crime.
Sutton asked the federal district court to grant summary judgment to her in her lawsuit but it refused. Sutton appealed and her case was consolidated with Culley’s. In July 2022, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit ruled against the two women.
The petitioners asked the Supreme Court to grant their petition because the various circuit courts do not agree “on the controlling issue of federal law” and because the Supreme Court previously agreed to hear a similar case. The Supreme Court was unable to resolve that case because of a jurisdiction-related problem, according to the petition filed with the Supreme Court.
Civil asset forfeiture laws are ripe for abuse and provide undue incentives to governments to grab property that was not used in criminal activities, critics say.
“Civil forfeiture laws in many states allow governments to seize property from people not convicted of any crime, and keep it for months or years without a hearing before a judge to decide whether forfeiture is justified,” Larry Salzman, director of litigation at the Pacific Legal Foundation, told The Epoch Times in a statement.
“The Constitution demands more respect for property rights, and the Supreme Court may rule in this case that a prompt hearing is required,” Salzman said.
The Pacific Legal Foundation, a national public interest law firm based in Sacramento, California, filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the case, which is known as Culley v. Marshall, court file 22-585. Steve Marshall, a Republican, is attorney general of Alabama.
Marshall told The Epoch Times that the petitioners here failed to follow state-prescribed procedures.
“Like in most states, Alabama law provides that certain items used to commit crimes are subject to forfeiture. And Alabama law provides protections to innocent owners of such items. If, for example, a criminal uses a car that is not his to commit a crime, but the car’s owner had no reason to think it would be used to commit a crime, Alabama law provides several ways for her to get her car back,” he said in an emailed statement.
“Plaintiffs in this case opted not to use those means and instead sued in federal court. My office successfully defended the constitutionality of Alabama’s laws before two district courts and the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals. I am confident that after the U.S. Supreme Court reviews the merits of this case, the Court will reach a similar conclusion,” Marshall said.
The Epoch Times reached out to counsel of record for the petitioners and the two municipalities for comment but had not received a reply from any of them as of press time.
The case is expected to be heard in the court’s new term that begins in October.
