The town of Brookside, Alabama has agreed to pay $1.5 million and accept decades of policing restrictions to settle a federal class action accusing it of running traffic stops and tows as a revenue operation. The Brookside Alabama settlement, filed for preliminary approval on February 6, 2026, would compensate drivers who were ticketed in the town’s municipal court or had their vehicles towed by Brookside police between March 1, 2018 and August 1, 2022. A federal judge has not yet approved the deal, and the claims process has not opened.
Who Is Covered and What Payouts Look Like
The settlement splits the $1.5 million fund into two pools tied to how a person was affected.
- $1 million for people whose vehicles were ordered towed by Brookside police during the covered period.
- $500,000 for people charged with offenses in Brookside’s municipal court during the same period.
- Up to $155,000 to run the claims process.
- A separate $5,000 payment to named plaintiff Brittany Coleman for Fourth Amendment claims tied to her stop.
Individual payouts are estimated between $250 and $2,000, with the exact figure depending on how many people end up in the class. At the March 4, 2026 hearing, attorneys in parallel cases disagreed about whether the class would include roughly 600, 1,200, or 1,800 people, and that number will drive what each claimant actually receives. The Institute for Justice, which represents the class, agreed not to seek attorneys’ fees, so the fund is not reduced by legal costs on the plaintiffs’ side.
What Brookside Has to Change
The policy terms reach further than the money and run for decades. Brookside agreed to cap how much revenue it can keep from policing and code enforcement on a 30-year sliding scale: zero percent for the first five years, one percent for years six through fifteen, and 2.5 percent for years sixteen through thirty.
Other reforms in the proposed deal:
- Brookside police will stay off Interstate 22 for ten years except in emergencies.
- The fee to retrieve a towed car is permanently repealed.
- Unpaid fines from the covered period are canceled and pending prosecutions dropped.
- Pay raises for the town judge and prosecutor are frozen for ten years.
- Ordinances, contracts, and meeting minutes must be posted online, with compliance documents sent to the Institute for Justice for ten years.
- The town will issue a formal acknowledgment that its “policy of aggressive policing likely interfered with the Town’s obligation to administer justice equally under law, undermined the public’s trust in the justice system, and raised serious constitutional concerns under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.”
Why Brookside Is Paying
The Institute for Justice filed the class action in April 2022 on behalf of four named plaintiffs: Brittany Coleman, Brandon Jones, Chekeithia Grant, and Alexis Thomas. The complaint alleged Brookside used arrests as pretexts to tow vehicles, requiring owners to pay $170 to the town plus fees and storage to Jett’s Towing Co., ticketed drivers for lacking insurance even when they produced valid proof, and stacked charges per stop to maximize revenue. Plaintiffs argued these practices violated the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment by pointing law enforcement at money rather than public safety.
The financial pattern behind the suit was documented in reporting and later confirmed in a state audit. Between 2018 and 2020, Brookside’s income from fines and forfeitures rose about 640%, from roughly $82,000 to more than $610,000, eventually making up half the town’s revenue. Tows climbed from 50 in 2018 to 789 in 2020. In 2020, Brookside recorded more misdemeanor arrests than it had residents.
Where Court Approval Stands
U.S. District Judge Anna Manasco heard the motion for preliminary approval on March 4, 2026 at the Hugo L. Black Courthouse in Birmingham and did not rule from the bench. She flagged questions about how the Brookside settlement would interact with other lawsuits pending against the town at the same time, pointing specifically to the “first-to-file doctrine,” and asked for supplemental briefing.
Until the judge grants preliminary approval, no claim form, deadline, or opt-out procedure exists. A class member cannot yet submit a claim because the class has not been certified for settlement purposes and the notice program has not begun.
What to Do If You Were Stopped or Towed in Brookside
If you were ticketed in Brookside’s municipal court or had a vehicle towed by Brookside police between March 1, 2018 and August 1, 2022, keep any citations, towing receipts, court paperwork, or bank records showing what you paid. Those documents will support a claim once the court authorizes notice and a claims administrator opens the process. The Institute for Justice, as class counsel, is the point of contact for updates on approval and claim procedures.
Plaintiff Chekeithia Grant, in a statement released by the Institute for Justice, said: “Police are supposed to protect and serve, not ticket and collect. When that gets flipped around, people suffer.” Coleman added: “We hope this will show other towns in Alabama and across the country that their police departments are not supposed to treat people like ATMs.”