NEW ORLEANS - Yesterday, the New Orleans City Council passed a resolution discouraging judges from imposing fines and fees, by subtracting $2 of city funding from local Criminal District Courts for every $1 imposed by judges in criminal cases. The resolution, drafted by staff in the Vera Institute of Justice’s New Orleans office, will help keep $3.5 million annually in the pockets of New Orleanians impacted by the criminal legal system.

“The criminal legal system shouldn’t be funded on the backs of people passing through it. The New Orleans City Council demonstrated their commitment to this principle,” said Will Snowden, director of Vera’s New Orleans office. “The resolution encourages judges to use discretion and keep close to $3.5 million a year in our communities.”

In New Orleans, judges extract $1.9 million annually from poor, mostly Black and brown residents in court costs, despite a 2018 federal court ruling that found New Orleans’s system of “user pay”-funded courts unconstitutional. Vera and other reform organizations, like the New Orleans Alliance for Equity and Justice, Southern Poverty Law Center, and the Orleans Parish Prison Reform Coalition, have been battling to pass legislation prohibiting fines and fees that exacerbate racial and economic disparities.

This is a remarkable win for New Orleans and a model for ending the unjust practice of generating court funding from the city’s poorest communities.

The full resolution can be found here.