In Black Hawk County, Iowa, inmates are asked to sign a pre-filled “confession of judgment” form just before their release. The form states that they owe the County for “room and board” and administrative costs for the time they spent in jail. Although the state of Iowa has enacted a statutory process for collecting jail fees, the County instead uses the signed confessions of judgment to demand payment from individuals without providing them notice or judicial review.

Plaintiffs Leticia Roberts and Calvin Sayers are two such former inmates. Prior to their release from custody, they signed confession of judgment forms stating that they each owed a significant debt. They were not given any meaningful opportunity to challenge the totals listed on those forms. Now, according to those forms, they owe a total of $730 and $4,415 in fees respectively for their time spent in jail—debts allegedly reimbursing the County for its administrative costs. After realizing that the signed confessions of judgment had eliminated their rights to any sort of process to challenge their jail fee debt, Roberts and Sayers sued the County and its sheriff for violating their constitutional rights to due process.

Roberts and Sayers filed their lawsuit on behalf of themselves and other plaintiffs who had similarly signed confessions of judgment in Black Hawk County. But their due process claims were never heard on the merits, because the district court dismissed their case. That court held that the plaintiffs lacked standing to challenge the County’s jail fee collection process.

Now the plaintiffs are appealing to the Eighth Circuit, and Cato has filed an amicus brief supporting them. In our brief, we argue that the County’s use of confessions of judgment to collect jail fees from inmates is unduly coercive and violates the inmates’ due process rights. The Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause requires the government to provide individuals with a fair and just process before depriving them of their property. Here, the plaintiffs were provided with no process at all because they signed a confession while in custody. And the County has shown no compelling need to bypass the process set out in Iowa law for the review of alleged jail fee amounts.

Our brief also argues that the district court erred in holding that the plaintiffs lacked standing to bring their due process claims. There is a real, live controversy in this case, because a win for the plaintiffs would invalidate their confessions of judgment and permit them to use the process set out in Iowa law to review their jail fee amounts. The Eighth Circuit should reverse the district court so that the plaintiffs can have their due process claim reviewed on the merits.