Alabama town stops prosecutions for late garbage bills after SPLC advocacy
In the video: Marissa Davis of Chickasaw, Alabama, talks about the frustration of having her garbage collection suspended after she fell behind on her trash and sewage bills. (Credit: Hillary Hudson)
Growing up in Detroit, José Young saw firsthand how easy it was for young people to end up on the wrong side of the law. Instead of following that path, he made his way into the military, then to a factory where he assembled transmissions for the Ford Motor Co. until he lost his leg in an automobile accident and was unable to work.
So it was a shock when the Chickasaw, Alabama, resident found himself in court, charged with theft of services for falling behind on his sewage and trash collection bill.
“They were actually saying everything had to be paid in full,” Young said. “So even in court, right after being brought in, you either pay it all or you go to jail, right? That really had me worried.”
For a veteran who had made a conscious effort his entire life to stay on the right side of the law, the thought of having a criminal record was humiliating, especially when Alabama has a law that exempts people surviving on disability payments from trash collection fees. Young did not know he could apply for this exemption, and the city did not inform him of the exemption while his past-due fees accumulated.
Young was struggling to catch up on his bills and to get his garbage services restored when the SPLC sent a letter to the city raising constitutional concerns about its practices.
When the SPLC sent its letter on Sept. 11, the city’s policy was not to accept partial payments or restore services until past-due accounts were paid in full.
In bright red letters, each monthly bill stated: “All bills with a $125 balance or more are DUE IMMEDIATELY or Services will be Disconnected. If services are disconnected, additional late fees will apply and must be paid, in full, along with the balance before services can be reconnected. ... We do not make payment arrangements.”
Despite what his bill said, the court ultimately gave Young additional time to pay off his balance. Young had a court date set for Dec. 5 to show how much progress he has made toward erasing his $1,800 in past-due payments.
A failure to appear could have resulted in a warrant for his arrest.
But after being notified of the SPLC’s concerns, the city of Chickasaw agreed this week to dismiss Young’s charges and he will no longer face the prospect of a criminal record for falling behind on his garbage bills.
The city is also in the process of dismissing all criminal charges for other residents who faced criminal charges.
The city has also agreed to return Young’s garbage can once he provides the city with paperwork about his disability.
“We spoke to dozens of residents who were in a similar situation as Mr. Young,” said Micah West, a senior attorney for the SPLC’s Economic Justice litigation team. “Suspending garbage pickup, imposing harsh late penalties and prosecuting people who through no fault of their own are unable to pay their garbage and sewage bills does not make payment suddenly forthcoming. Those practices make the prospect of repayment that much harder. We are thankful that the city is willing to work with us to address these concerns.”
Preying on people experiencing poverty
This is not the first time that the city of Chickasaw, a town of fewer than 7,000 people near Alabama’s Gulf Coast, has chosen to criminalize its residents for falling behind on bills. SPLC attorneys approached city officials in 2016 after learning that the municipality was filing criminal charges against residents for overdue water bills, in addition to shutting off service until the overdue amount was fully paid. The municipal judge at the time signed a standing order to stop the practice, dismissing all pending cases, fees and costs.
But not even five years later, the city again began prosecuting people who fell behind on their utility bills, this time against residents who fell behind on their waste collection and sewage bills. Between 2021 and 2024, nearly 200 residents have been cited and charged under a city ordinance that, according to SPLC attorneys, violates their constitutional rights.
In response to the SPLC letter earlier this month, Chickasaw city officials agreed to put a moratorium on prosecutions.
As with most debt collection efforts of this type, those who are already struggling financially face the brunt of the effects, a burden that is borne unevenly across race and gender, West said.
The SPLC analyzed every criminal court file with demographic information between March 2021 and January 2024. This data showed that the city brought about 60% of prosecutions for theft of utilities against women, even though women comprise about half of the city’s population. And 37% of the cases were filed against Black women, who comprise 26% of the city’s population.
This criminalization of poverty occurred in one of the poorest municipalities in Alabama. Chickasaw has one of the highest poverty rates in the state; 31.5% of residents live below the federal poverty guideline. That is nearly double the state’s overall poverty rate of 16.2%.
At the time the SPLC sent its letter, residents who could not pay the flat $50 fee for sewage and $20 per month for trash pickup were charged a 35% late penalty every month, or $25. The price of falling behind on trash and sewage bills in Chickasaw was more than its actual trash collection fee.
But – until recently – even after the city had suspended trash pickup and eventually took the residents’ city-provided trash cans away, the service charge for trash pickup continued to accrue as if the service were continuing uninterrupted. In Young’s case, he was charged for trash collection service for two years after the city took his can away.
The true cost of suspensions
According to the United Nations, access to housing support services like sanitation is among seven defining elements of adequate housing. Though American courts have declined to recognize housing as a human right, the SPLC continues to work to affirm the human right to adequate housing. This is part of advancing racial justice in the Deep South.
“For communities already vulnerable to the effects of poverty – Black and Brown people, women and children, rural residents, elderly people and people with disabilities – removing a key part of adequate housing can be hugely destabilizing,” said Crystal McElrath, senior supervising attorney for the SPLC’s Economic Justice litigation team. “Utility shutoffs are often like evictions. Policies that deny people access to sanitation in their homes force these people out of their homes. These policies perpetuate housing instability and homelessness, disproportionately denying Black, Brown and Indigenous communities the opportunity to access safe, secure and affordable housing and essential services – exactly what was happening in Chickasaw.”
The lack of sanitation can increase susceptibility to illness, which people living in poverty may not be able to afford to treat, McElrath said. The termination of a utility service renders a home uninhabitable, forcing people in this situation to move. Moving frequently can affect children’s education, as children who move often are more likely to repeat grades in school. And if the whole family cannot afford to move quickly or frequently, families may be separated.
The termination of a utility service can also impact a person’s credit and jeopardize their eligibility for public benefits, McElrath said. Utility debt burdens may also force a family to choose between paying bills and purchasing food or medicine, leading again to health issues that they cannot afford to treat.
“In short, depriving someone of trash service can cost much more than even the most astronomical utility bill,” McElrath said.
‘I cannot pay that’
In May 2021, Shaquala Jackson moved to Chickasaw. She said she had an agreement with the landlord that she would pay the water bill and he would cover the sewage and trash collection. In her first month, things went smoothly.
But the next month, the trash and sewage bill came to her. And it was far larger than she expected.
“It was in my name, and it was at $1,200. So then I call the landlord, told him, ‘Look, I’m on Social Security disability,’” Jackson said. “‘I cannot pay that.’”
The landlord told her to go to the city hall, but the clerk there was not able to tell her why the bill was so high, she said.
“So, I just kept using the trash can like regular,” Jackson said. “Next thing I know, they took my trash can.”
Like Young, the city did not inform her that she could apply for an exemption from trash collection fees under Alabama law. She started putting her trash on the side of the house, which earned her a visit from the city’s code enforcement inspector.
“I had three small kids and I’m getting rats in my house, so I had my friend give me cats to go after the rats,” Jackson said. “I wasn’t cooking in my house or anything because I was scared, and the cats didn’t even help the rat problem.”
Jackson eventually started paying someone to remove her garbage, fearful that the rats would harm her kids and because the garbage was threatening their health and the habitability of her home.
“I was paying somebody $100 every two weeks to come out to pick up the trash that accumulated,” Jackson said, an amount five times the monthly total of her garbage bill.
Jackson paid this amount because she could not get her trash can back unless she paid her entire $2,000 balance in full, an amount far beyond her means.
Then she received a letter saying she had to go to court, where an even bigger shock awaited her.
“I went to court, and it [the bill] was, at this point … thousands of dollars,” Jackson said. “I said, ‘I cannot afford that, so can I make payments? They wouldn’t take the payments from me or let me make partial payments to them.”
After barely six months in Chickasaw, Jackson packed up her three children and moved out of the city. She left the enormous and expanding bill behind. In the criminal complaint against her, the city claimed she had “allowed unpaid trash and sewer services at [her] residence to total $71,500 before the account was terminated and trash cart was picked up.”
The criminal complaint was inaccurate. It would have taken 80 years of nonpayment for the 27-year-old Jackson to accrue that much garbage and sewage debt. She lived in her home for only six months.
Finding solutions
The effort to end the criminalization of financial indebtedness in Chickasaw follows a similar SPLC effort last year in Valley, Alabama. In that town, the newly elected district attorney agreed to dismiss all pending charges against residents for outstanding trash collection fees.
This sort of activity is also coming to light in other areas of the state. In Fayette, Alabama, a 47-year-old woman was sentenced to 10 days in jail in mid-September for unpaid trash collection fees.
“Alabama appears to be alone in prosecuting people who fall behind on their garbage and sewage bills,” said Ellen Degnan, a senior attorney with the SPLC’s Economic Justice litigation team. “We are not aware of any other state that criminalizes people who fall behind on their utility bills.”
In the letter to the city of Chickasaw, SPLC attorneys recommended several steps to assist residents. In addition to rescinding the city ordinance that had been used to justify prosecuting residents and immediately stopping all prosecutions under the ordinance, the letter notes that state law allows exemptions from municipal trash collection fees for senior citizens and people who earn less than three-fourths of the federal poverty level.
Attorneys also urged the city to allow customers to make partial payments on their accounts instead of having to pay overdue bills in one lump sum.
Additionally, the attorneys asked the city to make its residents aware of any programs that are available to exempt those with lesser means from its trash collection fees.
“We are pleased that the city is open to adopting many of our recommendations and agrees that residents should not be denied essential solid waste services or prosecuted simply because they cannot afford a trash or sewer bill,” Degnan said.
Although progress is being made in Chickasaw, cities all over Alabama continue to criminalize nonpayment of utility bills and the SPLC continues to receive more requests for help than the organization can field.
“The need for statewide reform is undeniable,” Degnan said.
SPLC attorneys and advocates said they hope that Alabama elected officials will take up the issue to prohibit the use of criminal prosecution and jail time to recover unpaid fees, to make it simpler for people with low incomes to obtain exemptions from solid waste fees, and to limit the late fees that can be assessed on unpaid solid waste fees.
“No other states criminalize unpaid trash bills like Alabama and yet, in Alabama, residents are becoming too accustomed to this unjust reality,” McElrath said.
Young agreed with that assessment.
“The crazy thing that I’m noticing is that this [not having trash collection] is not anything out of the ordinary for people in this town,” Young said. “People know that this is a problem on the street.”
Image at top: Chickasaw, Alabama, charged resident José Young with theft of services after he fell behind on sewage and trash collection bills, even though state law exempts people who receive disability payments from trash collection fees. The city has since agreed to dismiss the charges.(Credit: Dwayne Fatherree)
