SPLC Sues Florida Over $400,000 'Cost of Incarceration' Lien

The Southern Poverty Law Center and Public Justice sued the Florida Department of Corrections on Monday over a "cost of incarceration" lien of more than $400,000 imposed on Danny Johnson, a formerly incarcerated man with bipolar disorder, arguing that the debt is an excessive fine, was imposed without due process and amounts to punishment for his disability.

The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida against the department and its secretary, Richard Comerford. Johnson is now homeless with no income, and the debt continues to accrue interest, according to the release announcing the filing.

How a psychiatric emergency became a six-figure debt

The lien traces back to a single incident in late 2023. According to Public Justice, Johnson was sprayed in the face with chemical agents by an officer while he was attempting suicide in prison, and spat at the officer. The encounter left him hospitalized for more than four months, and he was never formally punished or criminally charged for the alleged battery.

The Department of Corrections nevertheless imposed the lien shortly afterward. Then, in February 2025, the agency asked the sentencing court for a lien of $50 for every day of Johnson's 22-year sentence. The judge granted that request eight days later, before Johnson had a chance to respond.

The total described by the Southern Poverty Law Center is $401,750. Florida's civil restitution lien statute dates to 1994 and was written to let the state recover the cost of housing people in prison — not as a second sentence. Public Justice notes that had Johnson actually been convicted of battery, the maximum fine a sentencing court could have imposed as punishment would have been $5,000.

A program that grew quietly in 2022

The mechanics matter as much as the amount. Under Florida's Civil Restitution Lien Act, entering the lien is treated by the courts as a "ministerial" task, meaning judges do not assess whether the figure is fair or whether it bears any relationship to the conduct alleged. People hit with these liens rarely have lawyers, and the debt is almost never collected, because people in prison have little means to earn.

The department used the tool sparingly for decades. That changed in 2022, when the agency announced it would pursue liens against people it accused of battering staff — regardless of whether the accusations were ever proven. Since then it has imposed more than 900 such liens, often for hundreds of thousands of dollars each. Under the statute as practiced, the amount tracks the length of the sentence, not the seriousness of the alleged conduct.

"This is a punishment with no trial, no hearing and no limit," said Jacqui Oesterblad, a staff attorney at Public Justice, in the release. "No Floridian should be sentenced to a lifetime of debt for the cost of their own incarceration."

Three legal theories in one complaint

The complaint advances three overlapping claims. The first is that the lien is an unconstitutionally excessive fine. The second is that Johnson was deprived of due process because the lien was entered on the department's request within days and without a meaningful opportunity to contest it. The third rests on the Americans with Disabilities Act: the conduct that triggered the lien, in the plaintiffs' account, was a symptom of a serious mental health disability that the department's own providers had diagnosed.

"Mr. Johnson was in the middle of a psychiatric emergency, and the state's answer was to bury him in debt he will never be able to repay," said Kelly Knapp, a senior staff attorney at the Southern Poverty Law Center. "The only lawful punishment against Mr. Johnson was his prison sentence. The FDC cannot build its own system to punish people for their disabilities, then call it the cost of recovery."

The plaintiffs are asking the court to strike down the lien against Johnson. The complaint is the latest in a series of challenges the Southern Poverty Law Center has brought against the department's use of cost-of-incarceration liens, including a case involving the seizure of a civil rights settlement.

Why it matters beyond one inmate

The case sits at the intersection of two systems that states are being pushed to coordinate: corrections and behavioral health care. State prisons and county jails hold large numbers of people with serious mental illness, and the period right after release is when housing, income and treatment either connect or collapse. A debt that accrues interest while a person is homeless works against every one of those connections.

It also lands as states and the federal government litigate how far Medicaid can go in conditioning an exemption on proof of disability — a fight that has consumed eligibility policy this year and that turns on the same question the Florida complaint raises: who decides what counts as disabled enough, and what happens to the people who fall on the wrong side of that line.

Florida is not the only state where reentry policy and mental health financing intersect. Our reporting on North Carolina's prison mental health reentry committee and on Texas prison overdose deaths and treatment budgets covers parallel efforts. People leaving incarceration who need mental health care or substance use disorder treatment can be screened for Medicaid and connected to care before release, though the availability of that bridge varies widely by county.

For Johnson, the immediate stakes are narrower than the policy debate. He is asking a federal judge to cancel a debt that, on the state's own accounting, was never meant to be a punishment in the first place.