Also known as: civil contempt orders · civil contempt
Written by attorneys — see sources below.
A judicial directive finding a party in violation of a court order and imposing sanctions to coerce compliance rather than to punish past conduct. The order typically permits the contemnor to purge the contempt by satisfying the underlying obligation. Due process requires adequate notice of the ability-to-pay issue along with a fair opportunity to present financial evidence and an express finding on ability to pay before incarceration may follow in child-support enforcement proceedings.
Cody Callahan appeared at a hearing after missing several child-support payments. The court gave him written notice of the proceeding and a financial disclosure form, asked targeted questions about his current earnings, and made an express finding that he could pay before ordering incarceration until the arrears were cleared. Cody later challenged the civil contempt order on due process grounds.
Catherine Carter refused a state court order to produce membership records of a nonprofit organization. After she persisted in noncompliance, the court entered a civil contempt order imposing daily fines that would cease only when the records were produced. Carter challenged the order as violating associational rights.
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is a nonprofit membership corporation organized under the laws of New York. Its first Alabama affiliates were chartered in 1918, and in 1951 the Association opened a regional office in Alabama employing two supervisory persons and one clerical worker. The Association has never complied with Alabama's foreign corporation qualification statute. In 1956 the Attorney General of Alabama brought an equity suit in the Circuit Court of Montgomery County to enjoin the Association from further activities within the state and to oust it from Alabama. The bill alleged that the Association had opened a regional office, organized affiliates, recruited members, solicited contributions, given financial support and legal assistance to Negro students seeking admission to the state university, and supported a Negro boycott of Montgomery bus lines. On the day the complaint was filed the Circuit Court issued an ex parte order restraining the Association pendente lite from engaging in further activities within the state and from taking steps to qualify to do business. The State moved for production of a large number of records including bank statements, leases, deeds, and records containing the names and addresses of all Alabama members and agents. Over the Association's objections the Circuit Court ordered production of a substantial part of the requested records including the membership lists and postponed the hearing on the restraining order. The Association answered the bill, admitted its Alabama activities substantially as alleged, and offered to qualify if the bar from qualification were lifted, but it did not produce the membership lists. For its failure to comply the Association was adjudged in civil contempt and fined $10,000, with the fine subject to increase to $100,000 if compliance was not forthcoming within five days. After the five-day period the Association produced substantially all requested data except the membership lists, and the Circuit Court increased the fine to $100,000. The Alabama Supreme Court twice dismissed petitions for certiorari to review the final contempt judgment, the first time for insufficiency of the petition's allegations and the second time on procedural grounds. The United States Supreme Court granted certiorari because of the importance of the constitutional questions presented.
View caseCascade Manufacturing continued discharging pollutants after a federal court enjoined the practice. Friends of the Earth obtained a civil contempt order requiring the company to pay a daily fine until it installed required treatment equipment. The order was designed to bring the facility into immediate compliance.
Laidlaw Environmental Services acquired a hazardous waste incinerator facility in Roebuck, South Carolina in 1986 that included a wastewater treatment plant. Shortly thereafter, it obtained an NPDES permit effective January 1, 1987 authorizing limited discharges of pollutants including mercury into the North Tyger River. Laidlaw repeatedly exceeded the permit limits, violating the mercury discharge limit on 489 occasions between 1987 and 1995. On April 10, 1992, Friends of the Earth and Citizens Local Environmental Action Network sent Laidlaw a 60-day notice letter of their intent to file a citizen suit under the Clean Water Act. On June 9, 1992, the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control reached a settlement with Laidlaw requiring payment of a $100,000 civil penalty. On June 12, 1992, FOE filed its federal citizen suit seeking declaratory and injunctive relief plus civil penalties. After a bench trial the District Court found the violations, imposed a $405,800 penalty, awarded litigation costs to FOE, and denied injunctive relief because Laidlaw had achieved substantial compliance since August 1992. The Fourth Circuit assumed without deciding that FOE initially had standing but held that the case had become moot because civil penalties payable to the government would not redress any injury FOE had suffered. The Supreme Court granted certiorari; after the Fourth Circuit decision but before argument the entire Roebuck facility was permanently closed, dismantled, and placed for sale with all discharges permanently ceased.
View caseCamila Cervantes, a prison official, failed to implement court-ordered reforms to solitary confinement practices. The district court issued a civil contempt order imposing escalating sanctions until the required changes were completed. The order aimed to secure future adherence to the remedial decree.
In 1969 Arkansas inmates filed this suit as a sequel to two earlier cases that had already held conditions in the state prison system unconstitutional. The District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas conducted an initial hearing in Holt I and directed the Department of Correction to make a substantial start toward improving conditions while filing progress reports. After finding progress unsatisfactory, the court held a second hearing in Holt II, issued guidelines identifying four areas requiring change, and again allowed the Department to devise its own plan. Routine conditions included confinement in punitive isolation for indeterminate periods in windowless eight-by-ten-foot cells that held an average of four and sometimes as many as ten or eleven prisoners. The cells contained no furniture other than a water source and a toilet flushed only from outside. Mattresses were provided at night but were removed each morning and returned at random. Prisoners received a diet of grue consisting of mashed meat, potatoes, oleo, syrup, vegetables, eggs, and seasoning baked into a paste that supplied fewer than one thousand calories per day. After the 1971 affirmance of the Holt II order, further hearings in 1972 and 1973 led the District Court in Holt III to find substantial improvements and withdraw its supervisory jurisdiction while keeping prior decrees in effect. A 1974 reversal by the Court of Appeals prompted a fourth set of hearings in 1976. The District Court found that conditions had seriously deteriorated. Cummins Farm's population rose from one thousand to about fifteen hundred inmates. There were twice as many prisoners as beds in some isolation cells. The grue diet continued in use, causing weight loss. Cells were vandalized. Understaffed guards resorted to nightsticks and Mace. Inmates were sometimes left in isolation for months. The court entered an order limiting the number of men per cell, requiring each inmate to have a bunk, discontinuing the grue diet, and setting thirty days as the maximum isolation sentence. After detailed consideration it also awarded twenty thousand dollars in attorney's fees to be paid from Department of Correction funds. The Court of Appeals affirmed the order and assessed an additional twenty-five hundred dollars to cover fees and expenses on appeal. The Supreme Court granted certiorari to review the challenges to the thirty-day limit and the fee awards.
View caseCameron Cruz, a noncitizen, was denied a notary commission under a state statute. After a court order directed the state to process his application, officials continued to withhold the commission. The court then entered a civil contempt order directing immediate issuance of the commission.
Bernal, a native of Mexico, has lived in the United States as a resident alien since 1961. He works as a paralegal for Texas Rural Legal Aid, Inc., assisting migrant farmworkers on employment and civil rights matters. In 1978 Bernal applied to the Texas Secretary of State to become a notary public. He sought the position so he could administer oaths and notarize statements for use in civil litigation. Bernal had previously held a notary commission in Indiana while working in a legal services program there. The Secretary of State denied the application because Bernal failed to satisfy the citizenship requirement of Texas Revised Civil Statutes Annotated Article 5949(2). After an unsuccessful administrative appeal, Bernal joined as a coplaintiff in a federal district court suit initially filed by Margarita Vargas, who later obtained citizenship and left the case. The district court ruled in favor of the plaintiffs. A divided panel of the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit reversed, and the Supreme Court granted certiorari. Texas notaries public authenticate written instruments, administer oaths, and take out-of-court depositions. The State does not require citizenship for court reporters, who perform some of the same services, or for the Secretary of State, who supervises the licensing of all notaries public.
View caseClaire Campbell received a civil contempt order after school officials ignored an injunction barring corporal punishment. The order required the district to cease the practice and to submit compliance reports. Sanctions were set to increase until the reports confirmed adherence.
In January 1971, former students James Ingraham and Roosevelt Andrews filed a complaint in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida against the Dade County School Board, principal James T. Ingraham, assistant principal Willie J. Wright, and other school officials. The action sought damages for individual paddling incidents and injunctive relief on behalf of all students in the Dade County schools under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. On October 6, 1970, Ingraham was subjected to more than 20 licks with a wooden paddle while held over a table in the principal's office after being slow to respond to a teacher's instructions. The paddling caused a hematoma requiring medical attention and keeping him out of school for several days. On December 1, 1970, Andrews was paddled several times for minor infractions in the school auditorium, with strikes to his arms, back, and neck that caused him to lose the full use of his arm for a week. In the 1970-1971 school year many of the 237 schools in Dade County used corporal punishment as a means of maintaining discipline pursuant to Florida legislation and a local School Board regulation. The authorized punishment consisted of paddling the recalcitrant student on the buttocks with a flat wooden paddle measuring less than two feet long, three to four inches wide, and about one-half inch thick. The normal punishment was limited to one to five licks or blows with the paddle and resulted in no apparent physical injury to the student. Teachers often administered the punishment without first consulting the principal, contrary to the procedural requirements of the statute and regulation. The evidence, consisting mainly of the testimony of 16 students, suggests that the regime at Drew was exceptionally harsh. The District Court granted the defendants' motion to dismiss after the close of the plaintiffs' case, finding no constitutional violation. A panel of the Court of Appeals reversed, but upon rehearing the en banc court affirmed the judgment of the District Court. The Supreme Court granted certiorari limited to the questions of cruel and unusual punishment and procedural due process.
View caseNo categorical right to counsel exists. When the opposing parent is also unrepresented, alternative safeguards such as notice of the ability-to-pay issue, a fair chance to present financial evidence, and an express judicial finding on ability to pay can satisfy due process.
Officers, agents, servants, employees, attorneys, and persons in active concert with a party are bound once they receive actual notice. A billing subsidiary or collections agency that follows a party's instructions to continue enjoined conduct after receiving notice can therefore be sanctioned.
The court must supply adequate notice that ability to pay is the central issue, afford a meaningful opportunity to present and contest financial information, and make an express finding on present ability to pay. Absence of these protections renders the incarceration order constitutionally defective even without appointed counsel.
…obligations that do not infringe upon the right to marry. The State may enforce support obligations through wage assignments, civil contempt proceedings, criminal nonsupport proceedings, and other means. The State may also require that persons with support obligations post bonds or make other financial arrangements to ensure…