The Supreme Court on Thursday made it more difficult for people with property seized by police to demand its prompt return.
By a 6-3 vote, the court ruled against two Alabama women who had asked for an immediate hearing to reclaim a car they owned that was seized by police in connection with a crime committed by someone else.
“After a state seizes personal property and pursues civil forfeiture, due process requires a timely forfeiture hearing, but not a separate preliminary hearing,” Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh wrote for the majority.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, dissenting, said the majority had adopted a wooden approach to a pressing issue.
“Today’s majority holds that due process does not require a minimum set of deferred hearings before police rob innocent owners of their cars for months or even years,” Justice Sotomayor wrote.
Even though the court rejected the women’s argument that the Constitution requires a streamlined process, the five justices expressed serious concerns about the practice of civil asset forfeiture, which involves confiscating property known to have been used to commit a crime.
The court ruled on two cases. One of them began after Halima Culley purchased a 2015 Nissan Altima for her son to use in college. He was taken into police custody in 2019 and arrested after discovering marijuana. They also seized Mr Culley’s car.
That same year, Lena Sutton lent her 2012 Chevrolet Sonic to a friend. He was stopped for speeding and arrested after police found methamphetamine. Mr Sutton’s car was also impounded.
Alabama law in effect at the time allowed so-called innocent owners to recover seized property, and both women ultimately convinced judges to return the cars. Each case took more than a year, but there was debate about whether the women could have done more to speed up the process.
Mr. Culley and Mr. Sutton filed a class action lawsuit in federal court, arguing that they should have been given an immediate interim hearing to argue for the return of their vehicles while the case was ongoing. A lower court ruled against them.
Justice Kavanaugh wrote that the Constitution’s due process clause does not require the preliminary hearing the women sought.
“Culley and Sutton’s argument for a separate preliminary hearing appears in many ways to be a backdoor argument for a more timely hearing that would allow property owners with good defenses to forfeiture to recover their property more quickly.” he wrote “But court precedent already requires a timely hearing.”
Alabama has since amended its forfeiture laws to allow owners of seized property to request an emergency hearing.
“Our decision today does not preclude legislatively mandated innovation,” Justice Kavanaugh wrote. “Rather, our decision addresses only the basic protections of the Due Process Clause.”
John G. Roberts Jr. Chief Justice and Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr., Neil M. Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett joined the majority opinion.
Justice Gorsuch, who joined Justice Thomas in a concurring opinion, said he agreed that a separate hearing was not necessary. But he added that questions remain about “whether modern civil forfeiture practices can be consistent with the Constitution’s due process promise.”
He wrote that civil forfeiture “has become a booming business,” with federal forfeitures alone generating $2.5 billion in 2018.
“In the future, we hope that a full briefing will allow us to begin assessing how well the fundamental changes in civil forfeiture practices we have seen in recent decades are consistent with due process principles,” he wrote.
In the dissent in the case, Culley v. Marshall, no. 22-585, joined by Justices Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson, who made similar arguments.
“Police agencies often have a financial incentive to impound as many cars as possible and try to keep them,” she wrote. “Forfeiture proceeds are not supplementary. In fact, many police agencies rely on cash flow from forfeiture for their budgets.”
Judge Sotomayor added: “Not only do these cash incentives incentivize counties to create labyrinthine processes for property recovery in the hope that innocent owners will give up trying to recover, they also impact what laws police enforce, how they enforce them, and who they enforce. against.”
