NAACP Maintains 2019 Cleveland ‘Water Lien’ Case is Worthy of Class Action Suit With Thousands Affected

Lawyers working for an affiliate of the NAACP argued earlier this month that an ongoing suit against Cleveland Water should be classified as a class-action case.

That suit, Pickett v. City of Cleveland, which was originally filed in 2019, contends that tens of thousands of mostly Black Clevelanders had been discriminated against when the city’s water department overbilled them, shut off their water line unjustly or placed liens on their homes for, in some cases, as little as $300 in  overdue bills.

Although the city has twice tried to appeal (and have the case dismissed), a trio of lawyers for the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund have argued since last year that, as assistant attorney to the plaintiffs Arielle Humphries said, “thousands of complaints” against Cleveland Water clearly amount to a suit greater than on a person-by-person basis.

“We have shown that this is a widespread issue,” Humphries told Scene in a phone call on Wednesday. “And that there are a lot of Black Clevelanders that have been subject to the discriminatory lien policy and the discriminatory unfair billing policy.”

“The policy needs to change,” she added.

A brief filed in the Northern District of Ohio Court on October 4 supports the NAACP’s position that the case is worthy of class action status, which the court agreed with in a ruling late last year. Cleveland has since appealed.

The subject at hand: From 2012 to 2020, there were 17,000 liens on Clevelanders’ homes placed due to unpaid bills, the lawyers for the plaintiffs argue.

And unfairly so, they argue: 18 percent of those liens were on homes in majority-white neighborhoods, they say; about 70 percent of those liens were placed on homes in majority-Black neighborhoods, mostly those in Central, Lee-Miles, Fairfax and Slavic Village.

Which is, the lawyers argue, a matter of color and race, not just financial status—a clear violation, they say, of the Federal Housing Act, along with the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which states that no state “can take away a person’s life, liberty, or property without due process of law.”

“Even when controlling for median household income, the higher percentage of Black residents in any given neighborhood,” the October 4 brief reads, “the higher the number and proportion of all water liens are placed in that neighborhood.”

“Cleveland Water will not be commenting on this particular case, as it is an ongoing legal matter,” a spokesperson told Scene via email.

In a message to News 5, who covered the story in 2019, Cleveland Water said that they’re “currently working through the court system with outside counsel.”

The city, they also found, had spent $1.4 million in attorneys fees up to 2023 arguging the case.

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