In the politically-charged story about Roy Moore’s Ten Commandments Monument, I read that
My question is this: when the state is fined, where does the money go? If the money goes into state coffers, isn’t that a little bit, um, ridiculous?
Or is this a federal court, and so the money would be transferred from the state into the federal court system?
Daniel
>> Or is this a federal court
I think it is fairly certain that a “U.S. District Judge” is, well, a Federal Judge, so the money would go to the Feds.
Yep. The state will have to transfer funds to the Clerk of the Court for that federal district to be placed in the U.S. Treasury. If they don’t do it voulntarily, the U.S. Marshals Service or some other DoJ agency will do it for them.
Makes sense. Am I right in thinking that a court can only fine a level of government lower than itself? That is, the feds cannot fine Congress, and the state court can’t fine the state, and the local courts cannot fine a municipality or county?
Daniel
Would the state be justified in raising taxes to pay for the fines? How about cutting the funding to different state services?
A court cannot, in general, fine a level of government HIGHER than itself. Though there are really only federal and state levels of government; any municipal powers are granted by the state, which can set whatever rules it wants for what the municipalities can or can’t do.
But a federal court can fine a federal agency, and I imagine all state courts can fine their respective state agencies.
Of course IANAL, so this post will is not authoritative and will not have longer footnotes than text.