June 10, 2022
On Thursday, June 9, 2022, the court granted class certification in Keilee Fant, et al. v. City of Ferguson, a lawsuit we filed in February 2015 with co-counsel. The court certified five separate classes for damages purposes and one class for injunctive purposes. Thursday’s order is another crucial step toward securing relief for our clients. One class comprises over 11,000 people who were jailed by Ferguson since 2010 for a total of 480,000 hours—more than 54 years— all because they were unable to afford their bond.
Among the class members are the following:
- One named plaintiff who missed her father’s funeral because she was unable to bond out of jail.
- One class member who Ferguson arrested and jailed 53 different times from 2010-2015.
- Another named plaintiff who accrued $1,200 in fines and nine failure to appear tickets that all stemmed from a traffic stop where two initial tickets were issued.
Since 2015, ArchCity Defenders, Civil Rights Corps, White and Case, and the St. Louis University Law Clinics have litigated the case. With the classes certified, the plaintiffs, the class members, and their attorneys will continue to finally achieve the outcome that our plaintiffs and class members have been denied for far too long.
This is the third contested class certification that ACD has had approved in the past year. In November of 2021, a class of 7,000+ arrestees was certified in our lawsuit against Maplewood, and earlier in May of 2022, a court certified a class of many thousands of people who had been incarcerated in the City of St. Louis’ Workhouse.