On August 31, 2017, a resident of Bozeman, Montana, who was unable to pay his court debt that grew to nearly $4,000 out of a small $185 civil infraction, filed this class action lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Montana. The plaintiff sued the governor of Montana, the Attorney General of Montana, the administrator of the Motor Vehicle Division of Montana, and the Bureau Chief of the Driver Services Bureau of Montana all under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. The plaintiff, represented by Equal Justice Under Law, sought declaratory and injunctive relief as well as attorneys’ fees and costs. The plaintiff claimed that, by indefinitely suspending the driver's licenses of people who failed to pay court-ordered fines, costs, and restitution, even where nonpayment was solely due to indigence and thus not willful, the defendants had violated the equal protection, substantive due process, and procedural due process rights. The case was assigned to Judge Sam E. Haddon.

On October 17, 2017, the defendants filed a motion to dismiss the complaint for failure to state a claim upon which relief can be granted, arguing that the plaintiff had filed after the applicable statute of limitations had expired. Judge Haddon denied this motion without prejudice to allow renewal following the determination of class certification.

On March 2, 2018, the plaintiff moved to certify class, defining the class as “All Montana drivers who currently have, or will have, at least one driver’s license suspension because of unpaid court debts and who did not, or will not, receive an ability-to-pay hearing before the suspension.”

Later in March, the parties filed a stipulation of dismissal, requesting that the court dismiss the governor of Montana as a defendant. The parties proffered this voluntary dismissal after agreeing that the governor was not a proper defendant in this action because he does not administer the statutes challenged in the suit.

In April 2018, the court entered an order specifying due dates for discovery and supplemental briefs regarding the motion to certify class. An initial hearing on certifying the class was held on October 16, 2018. Judge Haddon did not approve the class in an October 17 order, but granted the plaintiff leave to amend his class certification complaint. The plaintiff filed an amended complaint on November 2, 2018, which included classes for all current and future "individuals whose Montana driver’s licenses are... suspended for nonpayment of a fine, cost, or restitution under Mont. Code Ann. § 61-5-214(1)(b) and who were unable to afford to pay the fine, cost, or restitution at the time of suspension." The current suspended license holders and future suspended license holders were separate classes. This new complaint also removed Governor Bullock as a defendant, matching the previous stipulation.

A hearing on the amended class was held on January 8, 2019. Judge Haddon again denied these classes the following day (2019 WL 145627), stating that creating a class in this situation was not useful, because if injunctive relief is granted to the plaintiffs individually, the entire class will get the benefit, certified or not.

Litigation on the underlying claims continued, with the defendants filing a motion for summary judgment on April 12, 2019. However, on May 15 of that year, the parties filed a motion to say due to the passage into law of HB217, which eliminated nonpayment of fees as a reason to strip a Montana driver of their license. A month later, the parties filed a stipulation for dismissal that the court granted on June 17. The case is closed.

Jake Parker - 06/11/2018
Ellen Aldin - 06/01/2020


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