Sandy Martinez's little-known story is a microcosm of the broader debate over what, exactly, transgresses the Eighth Amendment's prohibition on excessive fines.
Humboldt County, California's sketchy code enforcement scheme piles ruinous fines on innocent people and sets them up to lose.
The Federal Trade Commission reached a settlement with Amazon in its yearslong lawsuit against the company for "dark patterns" in Prime sign up and cancellation.
The penalty amounts to a "multibillion-dollar tariff," a Meta spokesperson says.
Bureaucrats in Dunedin, Florida, originally hit Jim Ficken with a fine close to $30,000. When he couldn't pay that, things turned dire.
Meta, Apple, Microsoft, and others have all faced legal action from the European Union in recent years.
Media investigations found over 3 million active license suspensions in the state.
If advertisers don’t want to give data to Facebook Marketplace, they shouldn’t advertise on Facebook.
Iowa has one of the most aggressive court systems in the country when it comes to billing defendants for court-appointed attorneys, even in cases where they're acquitted or charges are dropped.
Federal investigators say police in Lexington, Mississippi, used illegal searches, excessive force, and kept residents in jail when they couldn't pay off old fines.
The fines, which can reach over $750, are disproportionately likely to be handed out to black students, a complaint with the Education Department alleges.
State Rep. Matt Haney says he wants to attract workers back to California. But his "right to disconnect" legislation would likely scare businesses away.
A former chief judge of Delaware's Family Court argues that imposing fines and fees on juvenile offenders undermines their potential to become productive, law-abiding adults.
The Commodities Futures Trading Commission announces charges and settlements with three companies that may mean very bad news for all DeFi operations doing business with U.S. citizens.
The record penalty seems to be based less on the Facebook parent company's lax data practices than the U.S. intelligence community's data-collection programs.
A pilot proposal to levy civil fines based on income is being considered by the City Council.
The L.A. City Council saw a good thing happening and decided government wasn't involved enough.
The Supreme Court has agreed to hear 94-year-old Geraldine Tyler's case challenging home equity theft.
Any unjustified killing by the government demands public attention. But fatal shootings by police used to be much more common.
A federal judge denied qualified immunity for officers accused of making up charges to get money from fines.
Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill in September that will chip away at a policy that has long been criticized as enabling racially-motivated policing.
The Big Apple's building regulations are almost impossible to navigate, and officials like it that way.
Brookside faces several federal challenges for trying to fund its city by ticketing and towing the cars of anybody they can get away with.
The city halted its practice of fining graffitied businesses during the pandemic. But now it's firing up its enforcement machine again.
A plaintiff in the class-action lawsuit says he had to declare bankruptcy after Chicago dumped $20,000 of ticket debts on him.
The city's army of 160 speed cameras issued a ticket every 11 seconds during 2021 and generated $89 million in revenue.
Last week, Chief Mike Jones defended his campaign of fining everybody in sight. This week, he resigned.
Brookside officers have been accused of fabricating violations and are being sued.
Since lacking licenses can lead to lacking the ability to work (and pay fines), offenses like parking tickets or failing to come to a complete halt at stop signs can upend lives unjustly.
A homeless man’s truck was impounded in Seattle and he couldn’t afford the costs to get it back. That’s unconstitutional, justices rule.
So the Washington Supreme Court holds in a case involving a man who was living in his truck, and who had to pay the money when his truck was impounded for being parked too long in one place.
Sandy Martinez is challenging the exorbitant penalty for driveway cracks, a storm-damaged fence, and cars parked in an "unapproved" manner on her own property.
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