Error and/or relief
A court must consider a defendant’s inability to pay before imposing a court operations assessment and a court facilities assessment. We therefore remand to the trial court to conduct an inability to pay hearing as to those assessments.
First Holding:
Under Kopp, a court must consider a defendant’s inability to pay before imposing a court operations assessment and a court facilities assessment.
Authority:
People v. Kopp (2025) 19 Cal.5th 1
Second Holding:
Restitution fines and parole revocation fines under sections 1202.4 and 1202.45a), respectively, are punitive fines. Court operations assessments and court facilities assessments, under section 1465.8(a)(1) and Government Code section 70373(a)(1), respectively, are ancillary costs and not punishment. As to punitive fines, subject to the Eighth Amendment, a court may impose a nonexcessive fine as punishment. therwise, an excessive fines analysis applies to punitive fines imposed in excess of the minimum. Because the trial court here imposed punitive fines in the minimum amounts of $300 and stayed the parole revocation fine, they are not subject to an inability to pay hearing, as the defendant concedes.
Authority:
People v. Kopp (2025) 19 Cal.5th 1, 13-15
Third Holding:
However, ancillary costs do implicate equal protection principles. The court operations and facilities assessments are ancillary costs intended to raise funds for the courts. A criminal defendant cannot avoid the imposition of these costs regardless of indigency. By contrast, an indigent civil litigant may have similar fees waived entirely. Where the Legislature has already determined that both criminal defendants and civil litigants should be charged similar amounts for the same reasons, there appears no rational basis to deny only indigent criminal defendants the ability to avoid those costs. Accordingly, equal protection principles require a court, upon request, to consider a defendant’s inability to pay before imposing a court operations assessment under section 1465.8(a)(1) or a court facilities assessment under Government Code section 70373(a)(1). Therefore, the trial court here should have considered the defendants’s inability to pay before imposing the $40 court operations assessment under section 1465.8(a)(1) and the $30 criminal conviction assessment fee under Government Code section 70373(a)(1).
Authority:
People v. Kopp (2025) 19 Cal.5th 1, 18, 28-29, 30