Public Counsel advanced the legal arguments that helped influence today’s decision, representing a disabled homeless mother assessed hundreds in court fees without regard for her ability to pay.
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- Read the decision here
- For more on People v. Kopp, click here.
MONTEREY, CA, December 29, 2025 – Today, the California State Supreme Court took an important step forward to protect the rights of indigent people to fair access to justice. The decision confirms that courts must consider a criminal defendant’s ability to pay in the process of imposing fines and fees. This ruling will better protect low-income Californians from being trapped in court debt simply because they cannot afford to pay, helping ensure equal treatment under the law regardless of income.
Today’s ruling in the case of People v. Kopp stems from a 2019 Public Counsel case People v. Dueñas, in which a court assessed Velia Dueñas, a low-income mother of two with cerebral palsy who was experiencing homelessness, a $220 fee she could not pay. A spiraling chain of consequences from her inability to pay mandatory court fees sank her deeper into debt and legal entanglement. She was even incarcerated for 50 days.
Public Counsel took up Ms. Dueñas’ case and prevailed on her behalf, winning a successful appeal on the grounds that assessing fines and fees without consideration of an individual’s ability to pay is unconstitutional. Today’s ruling affirms that basic principle as a matter of constitutional law in California.
“Criminalizing poverty is wrong, harms our communities, and perpetuates hardship and injustice,” said Kathryn Eidmann, Public Counsel’s President and CEO, who argued the case on behalf of Ms. Dueñas. “While today’s ruling adopts a narrower constitutional framework than Dueñas, it affirms a core principle our work helped advance: courts must consider a person’s inability to pay before imposing certain court assessments. This holding is a meaningful step toward a justice system that does not punish people for poverty. We join the Court in strongly urging the Legislature to build on this decision and take further steps to end poverty-based court debt.”
There are dire consequences when people who cannot afford to pay criminal fines are trapped in a cycle of poverty and debt. As Justice Goodwin Liu’s concurrence underscores: “Because these critical issues will likely result in differing approaches in the lower courts and disparities in treatment of indigent criminal defendants throughout the state, I join the court in urging the legislature to consider further reforms, guided by a basic corollary to the principal of equal justice under the law: While a defendants poverty does not make him any less subject to punishment for violating the law, our justice system must not punish a defendant, more harshly, simply because he is poor.”
After the Dueñas decision in 2019, appellate courts across California issued conflicting rulings on whether judges must consider a defendant’s ability to pay before imposing court fines and fees. While some courts followed the reasoning in Dueñas, others disagreed, leading to inconsistent standards statewide.
To resolve this split, the California Supreme Court granted review in People v. Kopp, a case involving two defendants—Christi Kopp and Jason Hernandez—who jointly appealed aspects of their criminal sentences. They challenged the constitutionality of fines and fees imposed without any determination of their ability to pay, raising the key “ability to pay” that was resolved in today’s decision. In addition to prevailing in Dueñas, Public Counsel filed an amicus brief in support of the defendants and participated in oral argument in People v. Kopp.
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