Juvenile Fee Abolition in California: Early Lessons and Challenges for the Debt-Free Justice Movement

By Jeffrey Selbin

Maria Rivera was raising two boys on her own in Orange County, California, when her youngest son got into trouble. Although court records for youth are typically sealed, we know that in 2008 Ms. Rivera’s son became one of tens of thousands of young people referred annually to the state’s juvenile legal system, resulting in his detention for almost two years. Then came the bills. The county charged Ms. Rivera $23.90 for every day her son was detained and $2200 for his court-appointed lawyer. All told, Orange County said she owed more than $16,000. Until recently, California law authorized counties to charge administrative fees to parents and guardians for their children’s detention, lawyers, electronic monitoring, probation supervision, and drug testing. By statute, the fees were supposed to help counties recoup “the reasonable costs of support of the minor,” but the law also required counties to determine whether families could afford to pay the fees. Ms. Rivera was unemployed and unable to make payments, so Orange County should have waived her fees. But California’s “ability to pay” provisions, in fact, put the burden on families to appear before a financial evaluation officer to prove their inability to pay. Like many families with youth in the juvenile legal system, Ms. Rivera was unable to meet the county’s demands to make such a showing. To deal with the mounting bills, Ms. Rivera sold her house and paid the county more than $9500. The county did not consider the judgment fully satisfied, so it obtained a court order against Ms. Rivera for almost $10,000. On top of what she had already paid and for reasons the county never explained, the court order exceeded what the county originally billed Ms. Rivera by more than $3000. Once a court orders juvenile fees to be paid, the debt becomes a civil judgment enforceable against the parent or guardian. Unlike most other civil judgments, juvenile fee debt lasts forever. If families fail to repay the debt, counties refer their accounts to the state’s Franchise Tax Board to intercept their tax refunds and garnish their wages. Unable to pay the civil judgment, Ms. Rivera filed for chapter 7 bankruptcy. When the bankruptcy court discharged her fee debt, Ms. Rivera may have thought the matter was resolved. But Orange County would not relent, eventually persuading the bankruptcy court to reinstate the debt on the grounds that it was not dischargeable under chapter 7. I

98 N.C. L. Rev. 401 (2020)