Wappler v. Ivey
What’s at stake: Whether people who are incarcerated can bring lawsuits without fear of retaliation. If sheriffs are allowed to charge pay-to-stay fees as retaliation for filing a lawsuit, sheriffs may be able to persuade others from bringing those claims.
Summary: When Michael Wappler brought a lawsuit challenging the conditions at the Brevard County jail, the Sheriff countersued him for more than $90,000 in “incarceration costs.” The sheriff claimed that he was entitled to payments for the full five years Mr. Wappler was sentenced to, even though he only spent about 17 months in the county jail. In response, Mr. Wappler argued that the Sheriff is asking for those fees as retaliation for his engaging in speech protected by the First Amendment. Public Justice and our partners at the Vanderbilt Law School First Amendment Clinic are representing Mr. Wappler to ensure that the Sheriff cannot pursue these fees as retaliation.
Florida law authorizes the state and counties to seek $50 per day an individual is incarcerated in jail or prison. Those entities can attempt to collect those fees in a separate civil suit or by filing a counterclaim in a pending case. But when they seek those fees, their actions must comply with the constitution. By targeting individuals who have brought lawsuits against the county or the sheriff, Florida’s law sets up a situation where incarceration fees can be weaponized to silence and punish cases against the government.
The Eleventh Circuit court agreed with Mr. Wappler that there were issues with the district court’s analysis of the fees at issue here and ordered the case back to the district to fully consider the sheriff’s request for incarceration costs. Public Justice then joined the case to assist Mr. Wappler in defending against the Sheriff’s counterclaim.
Core legal question: The Sheriff has brought a counterclaim for incarceration costs in direct response to Mr. Wappler’s filing of a lawsuit. Mr. Wappler has raised as a defense that using these fees in this way serves as a form of retaliation in violation of the First Amendment.