County inmate has a substantive due process claim for arbitrary financial penalty

This pro-se inmate in an upstate county jail wins his appeal in the Second Circuit, which finds that certain fines levied against him may violate the Constitution.

The case is Bass v. Swartwood, a summary order issued on December 22. He sues for substantive due process, a catch-all constitutional claim that allows people to sue under the Fourteenth Amendment when the government engages in uncivilized or outrageous behavior without any rational justification. These cases are hard to win, and since the plain language of the Constitutional does not actually make reference to "substantive due process," you can imagine a day when the Supreme Court does away with these claims altogether. 

But these claims are still with us, and Bass is able to proceed with his case. Bass alleges that the county jail imposed a disciplinary surcharge against him as a form of impermissible punishment. As a pretrial detainee who has not yet been convicted of anything, Bass is able to argue that the Fourteenth Amendment makes it illegal to impose a disciplinary surcharge for reasons unrelated to institutional security, damage to jail property, or any other legitimate purpose. Rather, he claims among other things, the jail imposed a fine against him for telling his fiancee that he loved her. If that is the case, the surcharge was baseless and plaintiff has a claim. The Court of Appeals (Perez and Merriam) reverses the Rule 12(b)(6) dismissal.

The case returns to the Northern District of New York to reconsider plaintiff's claim and to allow the county attorney's office to defend itself. This case may not yield a high damages award, but remember that constitutional claims are not always lucrative, and it's the principle that matters, even if the plaintiff finds himself in the county lockup.