No Equal Protection Right to Reimbursement for Community‑Service LFO Payments After Blake: Commentary on State v. Danielson

I. Introduction

In State v. Danielson (consolidated with State v. Nelson), No. 103627-2 (cons. w/ 103673-6), the Washington Supreme Court confronted a novel question created by its own watershed decision in State v. Blake, 197 Wn.2d 170, 481 P.3d 521 (2021): when a conviction is invalidated, and the defendant has satisfied legal financial obligations (LFOs) partly through community service rather than cash, does the federal Equal Protection Clause require the State to “refund” the economic value of that labor, just as it must refund cash payments?

The majority, in an opinion by Justice Madsen, answers “no.” It holds that individuals whose Blake-invalidated convictions led them to perform community service to pay LFOs have no constitutional right, under equal protection, to reimbursement for that labor. The court affirms the Court of Appeals and leaves in place a system under which:

• Cash payments on now-invalidated LFOs must be refunded (as the State is already doing), but
• Completed community service used to satisfy those same LFOs is not reimbursed.

Two dissents sharply criticize this outcome. Justice Mungia’s detailed dissent argues that Washington’s own equal protection and wealth-discrimination jurisprudence requires at least intermediate scrutiny and that, under any standard, the State’s differential treatment between cash and labor is constitutionally arbitrary and wealth-based. Justice Yu, in a shorter separate dissent, agrees that the result is unfair, but declines to extend federal equal protection or due process doctrine to cover the issue, and instead explicitly invites legislative correction.

The decision is a significant data point in three intersecting areas of Washington law:

• The scope of relief available after Blake, especially regarding LFOs.
• The reach (and limits) of equal protection for wealth-based classifications under both the federal Fourteenth Amendment and article I, section 12 of the Washington Constitution.
• The treatment of community service as a method of paying criminal debts and whether it has a compensable “property” character once a conviction is vacated.

II. Factual and Procedural Background

A. The Defendants’ Convictions and LFOs

Both petitioners, Simone Nelson and Sabra Danielson, pleaded guilty decades ago to strict-liability felony drug possession under the statute later invalidated in Blake.

1. Simone Nelson

• 1995: Pleads guilty in Clallam County to possession of methamphetamine.
• Sentence: 52 days in jail (with credit for time served) and $1,467.90 in LFOs; judgment allows some LFOs to be “satisfied by community service.”
• 1998: Pleads guilty to another possession count. Sentence: 60 days in jail (30 converted to community service) and $1,210 in LFOs.
• Total LFOs: Approximately $2,677.90.
• Performance:
  • About $1,900 paid in cash.
  • About $560 credited for community service hours.

Nelson was repeatedly involved in Clallam County’s “pay or appear” program, under which failure to pay monthly installments could lead to required court appearances and, ultimately, warrants and incarceration. The option to do community service in lieu of cash arose in that context.

2. Sabra Danielson

• 2003: Pleads guilty in Clallam County to possession of amphetamine.
• Sentence: 58 days confinement (30 converted to community service) and $1,060 in LFOs.
• The parties agreed she was indigent for purposes of waiving some costs, and the court did not find she could pay incarceration costs.
• Performance:
  • About $520 paid in cash.
  • Over 250 hours of community service performed, some beyond the required hours, with “excess” time credited against LFOs at minimum wage.

Danielson’s record shows community service performed for nonprofits (e.g., Lutheran Community Services Northwest, Port Angeles Food Bank), not for a government entity.

B. The Blake Decision and the Refund Regime

In Blake, the Washington Supreme Court held the strict liability simple possession statute, RCW 69.50.4013, unconstitutional. That decision invalidated thousands of convictions and triggered enormous remedial questions, including:

• Vacatur of convictions, resentencing, and release from custody.
• Refund of LFOs imposed based solely on now-invalid convictions.

In response, the legislature created the Blake Refund Bureau and dedicated funding to assist courts and local governments in refunding certain court fines and fees paid on invalidated drug possession convictions. The statutes explicitly cover monetary refunds of court fines and fees, but are silent on community service.

C. The Trial Court and Court of Appeals

After Blake, both Nelson and Danielson moved under CrR 7.8 to vacate their convictions and sought reimbursement for:

• Cash payments toward LFOs; and
• The value of community service hours used to pay LFOs.

The State agreed to refund the cash but opposed any reimbursement for labor. Trial courts:

• Vacated the convictions.
• Refunded cash payments.
• Denied reimbursement for community service credits.

On appeal, both petitioners argued:

• Denial of reimbursement for community service violated:
  • Due process;
  • Equal protection; and
  • Unjustly enriched the State.

The Court of Appeals (Division II) rejected these arguments:

• Substantive due process: No fundamental or substantive due process right to a monetary refund for community service LFO payments.
• Equal protection:
  • Petitioners did not show they were treated differently from similarly situated persons based on wealth, and
  • Even if they did, the State’s refusal to reimburse labor survived rational basis review; the State could rationally limit refunds to money it actually received.
• Unjust enrichment: Rejected, in part because the State had not demonstrably “benefited” from the community service, which occurred at private nonprofits.

D. Supreme Court Review

The Washington Supreme Court granted discretionary review and consolidated the cases. Petitioners focused their argument before the Supreme Court on equal protection under the federal constitution, grounding their theory in:

• Wealth-based discrimination (comparing those who can, and do, pay LFOs in cash and receive full refunds to those who must pay via labor and receive partial refunds), and
• The right to reimbursement recognized by the U.S. Supreme Court in Nelson v. Colorado, 581 U.S. 128 (2017).

They did not pursue a separate, fully developed due process claim in the Supreme Court, and they framed the case in terms of equal protection only.

III. Summary of the Court’s Decision

A. Holding

The majority holds that the State’s refusal to reimburse petitioners for community service they performed in satisfaction of LFOs associated with now-invalidated drug possession convictions does not violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment or its Washington counterpart, article I, section 12.

Key points of the holding:

• No cognizable right or interest in reimbursement for labor used to pay criminal LFOs can be derived from Nelson v. Colorado or other constitutional provisions.
• No showing of disparate treatment between wealth-based classes:
  • Petitioners did not show that individuals similarly situated but wealthier were treated differently.
  • They did not establish that community service is used only or even primarily by indigent persons or that wealthy defendants never choose it.
• Uncertain state action as to the labor itself, because the work was performed for nonprofits, not for the State.
• Given the absence of a protected right, a cognizable class, disparate treatment, or clear state action, the court declines even to select or apply a level of equal protection scrutiny.

B. Disposition

The Supreme Court affirms the Court of Appeals and the trial courts. Nelson and Danielson:

• Keep the refunds of their cash LFO payments already ordered, but
• Receive no reimbursement for time spent performing community service that previously reduced their LFO balances.

C. Dissents

• Justice Yu (dissenting in result):
  • Accepts that existing federal equal protection and due process doctrines may not comfortably reach this factual scenario and is hesitant to stretch them.
  • Nevertheless finds it fundamentally unfair not to recognize the economic value of community service in Blake-related refunds.
  • Expressly invites the legislature to correct this inequity as a matter of public policy.
• Justice Mungia (principal dissent):
  • Provides an extensive analysis of the punitive and regressive nature of LFOs and pay-or-appear programs.
  • Argues that:
    • There is an important right to LFO reimbursement once a conviction is invalidated (Nelson v. Colorado), and
    • Those who had to work off LFOs through community service constitute a wealth-based semi-suspect class under Washington law.
  • Concludes that:
    • Intermediate scrutiny applies, and
    • The State’s differential treatment between cash and labor cannot be justified even under rational basis review.
  • Accuses the majority of ignoring the realities of poverty and of retreating from established Washington equal protection doctrine concerning wealth-based discrimination.

IV. Precedents and Authorities: How They Shape the Decision

A. State v. Blake (Wash. 2021)

Blake is the foundational background case. It:

• Declared Washington’s strict-liability simple drug possession statute unconstitutional.
• Rendered thousands of convictions void or voidable, triggering vacatur, resentencing, and LFO refund obligations.
• Prompted legislative action creating the Blake Refund Bureau and funding for monetary refunds.

The Danielson majority notes that the legislature has already chosen to fund reimbursement of court fines for Blake-affected individuals, but emphasizes that the particular question before the court is narrow: “whether Nelson and Danielson brought an actionable equal protection claim,” not what relief is good policy.

B. Nelson v. Colorado, 581 U.S. 128 (2017)

Nelson v. Colorado is the central U.S. Supreme Court precedent both parties cite, but they draw very different lessons from it.

1. What Nelson Held

In Nelson, Colorado required individuals whose convictions were reversed to initiate a separate civil proceeding and prove their actual innocence by clear and convincing evidence before retrieving court costs, fees, and restitution already paid. The U.S. Supreme Court held:

• This scheme violated procedural due process under the Fourteenth Amendment.
• Once a conviction is invalidated, the presumption of innocence is restored; the State cannot force individuals to prove innocence to recover “money they paid” based solely on those convictions.
• The Court applied the Mathews v. Eldridge balancing test and recognized a strong private interest in regaining funds paid to the State.

Critically for the Danielson majority, Nelson emphasized the private property interest in money taken pursuant to a conviction that no longer stands.

2. Majority’s Use of Nelson

The Danielson majority reads Nelson narrowly:

• The constitutional interest recognized there was an interest in “property,” specifically funds paid to the State.
• Nelson did not speak to, nor implicitly recognize, a right to reimbursement for labor performed in lieu of paying money.
• Petitioners’ reliance on presumption-of-innocence principles is misdirected because they challenge not a statutory refund scheme (like Colorado’s), but a simple denial of reimbursement for one subset of LFO payments.
• Since Nelson and Danielson received refunds for “the funds paid to their LFOs,” the due process interest identified in Nelson has been satisfied; what remains is their claim to labor reimbursement, which Nelson does not support.

Thus, the court holds that no fundamental or even “important” constitutional right to reimbursement of community service can be derived from Nelson.

3. Dissent’s Use of Nelson

Justice Mungia’s dissent treats Nelson more broadly:

• She agrees Nelson is a procedural due process case but emphasizes its central premise: the State has no right to retain anything (money or its equivalent) obtained solely by virtue of a conviction that has been invalidated.
• Because an LFO is, by statute, a “sum of money” (RCW 9.94A.030(31)), and because the trial court explicitly converted community service hours into monetary credits at minimum wage, the petitioners’ labor is functionally money in this context.
• Therefore, their interest in being restored to the status quo ante is the same important interest recognized in Nelson, and the State’s refusal to refund the monetized value of labor is equally constitutionally problematic.

C. Equal Protection Framework: Coria, Shawn P., Osman, Manussier, etc.

The majority recites the standard Washington equal protection framework, drawing on:

• State v. Coria, 120 Wn.2d 156 (1992)
• State v. Shawn P., 122 Wn.2d 553 (1993)
• State v. Osman, 157 Wn.2d 474 (2006)
• State v. Manussier, 129 Wn.2d 652 (1996)
• Nielsen v. Washington State Bar Association, 90 Wn.2d 818 (1978)

From these cases, the majority stresses:

1. Threshold questions:
   • What is the right or interest at stake?
   • What classification is alleged? Does it involve a suspect or semi-suspect class?
2. “Similarly situated” requirement:
   • Claimants must show they are similarly situated to others with respect to the legitimate purpose of the law and yet are treated differently.
   • There must be intentional or purposeful discrimination.
3. Levels of scrutiny:
   • Strict scrutiny for suspect classifications (e.g., race, national origin) or fundamental rights.
   • Intermediate scrutiny for important rights or semi-suspect classes.
   • Rational basis review for all other classifications and non-fundamental interests.

However, the majority uses this framework in a somewhat unusual way: rather than identifying a level of scrutiny and applying it, the court concludes that petitioners have failed the preconditions for equal protection analysis (no right, no cognizable class, no discrimination, and potentially no state action), and therefore no level of scrutiny need be applied at all.

D. Wealth-Based Discrimination: Mota, Phelan, Fogle, Reanier, Bearden, etc.

The dissent’s equal protection analysis is anchored in a significant body of Washington and U.S. Supreme Court case law on wealth-based discrimination:

• U.S. Supreme Court:
  • Griffin v. Illinois, 351 U.S. 12 (1956) – Indigent defendants must receive access to trial transcripts to pursue appeals.
  • Douglas v. California, 372 U.S. 353 (1963) – Indigent appellants entitled to counsel.
  • Williams v. Illinois, 399 U.S. 235 (1970) – Cannot imprison a defendant beyond statutory maximum solely because he cannot pay a fine.
  • Bearden v. Georgia, 461 U.S. 660 (1983) – It violates equal protection/due process to imprison someone for failure to pay a fine without inquiring into ability to pay and considering alternatives (including community service).
  • Plyler v. Doe, 457 U.S. 202 (1982) – Intermediate scrutiny for denial of education to undocumented children; important for how intermediate scrutiny is framed.
• Washington Supreme Court:
  • In re Personal Restraint of Mota, 114 Wn.2d 465 (1990) – DOC violated equal protection by denying good-time credit for pretrial jail time; recognized that persons who cannot afford bail form a semi-suspect, wealth-based class when important liberty interests are at stake.
  • State v. Phelan, 100 Wn.2d 508 (1983) – Equal protection problem where pretrial detainees (unable to make bail) are treated differently from those on bail.
  • In re Personal Restraint of Fogle, 128 Wn.2d 56 (1995) – Reaffirmed intermediate scrutiny in certain wealth-discrimination contexts.
  • Reanier v. Smith, 83 Wn.2d 342 (1974) – Denial of credit for pretrial jail time is wealth discrimination; adopted reasoning that those who remain in jail for lack of money to make bail are treated differently from those who can secure release.

Justice Mungia reads these cases to establish that:

• Washington treats wealth-status discrimination as involving a semi-suspect class when important liberty or related interests are implicated.
• This triggers intermediate scrutiny: the State must show a substantial governmental interest and a sufficiently tight fit between classification and interest.
• Wealth-based distinctions do not have to be explicitly written into a statute to be actionable; they may be inferred from the real-world functioning of the system (e.g., only the poor remain in pretrial detention).

The majority counters that petitioners have not adequately proven:

• That community service is actually reserved for, or practically limited to, indigent defendants; nor
• That any governmental actor intentionally singled out indigent persons for worse treatment.

This disagreement over how concretely one must prove a wealth-based classification—versus drawing reasonable inferences from the structure of the system—is central to the difference between the majority and dissent.

E. Other Equal Protection and Rational Basis Cases: Willoughby, DeYoung, Knapp, Anderson, Morris

Justice Mungia also invokes several decisions to argue that:

• Preserving state funds is not a legitimate standalone basis for creating discriminatory classifications under equal protection (Willoughby v. Department of Labor & Industries, 147 Wn.2d 725 (2002)).
• Even under rational basis review, a classification must be meaningfully connected to a legitimate policy goal; overly attenuated or arbitrary distinctions fail (DeYoung v. Providence Medical Center, 136 Wn.2d 136 (1998)).
• When two groups are in materially identical situations with respect to the purpose of a law, the State generally cannot treat one more harshly based on how they arrived at that status (e.g., credit for time in mental health facilities or home detention in In re PRP of Knapp, 102 Wn.2d 466 (1984); State v. Anderson, 132 Wn.2d 203 (1997)).
• Arbitrary distinctions between offenders in similar positions—for example, giving firearm rights restoration to certain felons but not to former mental patients—can violate equal protection (Morris v. Blaker, 118 Wn.2d 133 (1992)).

In her view, the difference between:

• Person A who paid $1,000 in cash toward LFOs and receives $1,000 back after Blake, and
• Person B who “paid” the same $1,000 through credited labor and receives nothing

is exactly the kind of arbitrary, wealth-linked classification these cases forbid.

V. The Court’s Legal Reasoning

A. Majority: No Right, No Class, No Discrimination → No Equal Protection Violation

1. No Protected Right to Reimbursement of Labor

The majority begins with the asserted right: a “fundamental or important right” to reimbursement of the economic value of community service hours used to pay LFOs after the underlying conviction is invalidated.

It rejects this framing on several grounds:

• Constitutional rights like the presumption of innocence and due process, as discussed in Nelson v. Colorado, apply to monetary property wrongfully retained by the State, not to labor performed in satisfaction of court-ordered obligations.
• The Court has never recognized a fundamental or important right to be paid by the State for work done as part of a criminal sentence or for community service performed to offset fines.
• Washington’s Blake Refund statutes create a statutory remedy for monetary refunds; they do not establish a general constitutional right to restitution for all consequences of an invalid conviction.

Thus, at the threshold, the majority holds the petitioners have not identified any constitutional “right to reimbursement for labor” that can ground an equal protection claim.

2. No Showing of Wealth-Based Classification or Disparate Treatment

The court next addresses whether petitioners have shown that they:

• Are part of a semi-suspect “wealth-based” class; and
• Have been treated differently from similarly situated others because of that class membership.

The majority concludes they have not:

• The record does not clearly establish that either petitioner was indigent at the time they performed community service (even though they had public defenders and some indigency findings for other purposes).
• The statutory provision often cited, RCW 10.01.160(4), permits courts to modify payment methods (including allowing community restitution) upon a showing of “manifest hardship,” which could be for reasons other than poverty (e.g., illness, childcare). It is not explicitly limited to indigent persons.
• Amici and social science evidence showing that low-income defendants commonly use community service instead of cash may be suggestive but does not prove, in this record, that only or primarily the poor do so.
• Petitioners were not ordered to perform community service instead of paying cash; rather, they were given the option of an alternative means of payment, which can be seen as a benefit rather than a disability.

Therefore, the majority finds “no wealth-based classification” has been established; the existence of a de facto class of “people who pay with labor because they cannot pay with cash” is treated as an unsupported assumption rather than a proven fact.

3. Questionable State Action Aspect

Equal protection claims require state action. The majority briefly suggests that:

• Petitioners’ community service was undertaken at private nonprofit organizations.
• The State may therefore not have received any direct benefit from the labor.

Although state action clearly exists in the trial courts’ decisions to deny refunds, this state-action discussion serves more to undermine any notion that the State is retaining a benefit derived from the labor, which might otherwise support a notion of a compensable interest.

4. No Need to Choose a Level of Scrutiny

Having found:

• No protected right,
• No cognizable wealth-based class,
• No disparate treatment based on such a class, and
• Uncertain state action with respect to the labor itself,

the majority concludes that the petitioners have failed to satisfy the basic elements of an equal protection claim. It therefore finds it “unnecessary to decide the applicable level of scrutiny.”

This is procedurally significant: rather than categorizing the alleged classification under strict, intermediate, or rational basis review, the court ends the equal protection analysis at the “threshold” stage, indicating that nothing constitutionally cognizable is at stake in the first place.

B. Justice Yu’s Dissent: Fairness vs. Doctrinal Expansion

Justice Yu’s short dissent occupies a middle ground:

• She agrees with the majority that current federal equal protection and due process doctrines, as interpreted by the U.S. Supreme Court, are not a comfortable fit for petitioners’ claim—especially in an era where, in her words (quoting Justice Sotomayor), the U.S. Supreme Court is “retreating from meaningful judicial review exactly where it matters most.”
• She is reluctant to extend or reshape those doctrines in this case, worried about unintended doctrinal consequences.
• However, she finds it deeply unfair that the law refuses to recognize the economic value of community service in Blake refunds, given that the labor was used precisely to discharge monetary obligations later deemed invalid.
• She stresses that the court’s decision does not limit the legislature’s authority to adopt more generous, fairness-driven reimbursement schemes and explicitly calls on the legislature to consider statutory refunds for community service at the time-of-imposition valuation.

For Justice Yu, then, the “right” answer lies in the realm of policy and legislation, not in stretching federal constitutional doctrine.

C. Justice Mungia’s Dissent: A Full Equal Protection Analysis

Justice Mungia’s dissent is a comprehensive equal protection treatise applying both federal and Washington law. Its essential moves are:

1. Establish state action: Trial courts are state actors; their decisions to:
   • Impose LFOs,
   • Accept community service in payment,
   • Convert hours into dollar credits, and
   • Deny refunds for those credits
   are all state actions subject to equal protection scrutiny.
2. Identify similarly situated groups and disparate treatment:
   • Group A: People whose invalidated convictions led them to fully or partially satisfy LFOs via community service credited as a dollar amount.
   • Group B: People whose invalidated convictions led them to satisfy LFOs entirely in cash.
   • Both groups:
     • Were convicted under the same unconstitutional statute.
     • Paid LFOs that the State now lacks legal authority to collect.
     • Seek to be restored financially after vacatur.
   • Disparate treatment:
     • Group B receives full refund of payments.
     • Group A receives no refund for the portion paid via labor.
   This structure mirrors Mota, where two groups both served time in detention, but only one received time-credit.
3. Show the right at stake is important:
   • The right to be restored to one’s prior financial position when a conviction is invalidated (as recognized in Nelson v. Colorado) is an important right.
   • Because the community service has already been converted into dollars by the sentencing courts, the petitioners’ interest in that monetized value is materially identical to the interest in cash payments recognized in Nelson.
4. Characterize the class as wealth-based:
   • In practice, people do not choose community service to pay LFOs when they can comfortably pay in cash; they do so because paying in cash would inflict “manifest hardship” or is impossible, so they must expend their labor instead.
   • Wealth is a fluid spectrum, as Bearden notes; one need not be formally indigent at all times to be part of this class.
   • The legislative and judicial history of LFOs in Washington, including high interest rates, pay-or-appear schemes, and evidence from the Minority and Justice and Gender and Justice Commissions, demonstrates that LFO community service is overwhelmingly used by those who cannot pay.
   • Washington’s own cases (Mota, Phelan, Fogle, Reanier) treat wealth-based classifications as semi-suspect when they implicate liberty or similar important interests.
5. Apply intermediate scrutiny (and, alternatively, rational basis):
   • Under intermediate scrutiny, the State must show that denying reimbursement for labor—but not for cash—substantially furthers an important governmental interest.
   • The only plausible interest suggested is conserving public funds or restricting refunds to money the State physically received.
   • But conserving funds alone is not a legitimate interest under Washington equal protection doctrine (Willoughby), and limiting refunds to “money received” is arbitrary when:
     • Both cash and labor payments were compelled solely by an invalid conviction, and
     • The labor was already converted into a specific monetary credit by the courts.
   • Even under rational basis review, she argues:
     • No coherent policy goal—public safety, administrative efficiency, or finality—is uniquely served by refunding cash but not labor.
     DeYoung and similar cases.

Mungia concludes that the State is effectively penalizing poor defendants twice: they have already paid in labor because they could not pay in cash, and they now are denied the financial restoration that wealthier defendants receive.

VI. Complex Concepts and Doctrinal Clarifications

A. Legal Financial Obligations (LFOs) and Community Service

LFOs are court-ordered monetary obligations imposed as part of a criminal sentence. They can include:

• Fines,
• Court costs,
• Public defender recoupment,
• Restitution to victims, and
• Interest and collection fees.

Historically in Washington:

• Courts could impose substantial LFOs even on people of limited means.
• Interest on many LFOs accrued at 12% per year until statutory reform in 2018.
• Unpaid LFOs could be sent to private collection agencies with significant surcharges.
• Failure to pay could, if deemed “willful,” lead to jail, warrants, or other sanctions.

RCW 10.01.160(4) allows courts to modify payment methods, including:

• Extending time to pay,
• Reducing installment amounts, or
• Allowing “community restitution” (community service) in lieu of cash if payment would cause “manifest hardship.”

In practice, community service credited against LFOs is:

• Not “voluntary” charity work; it is often performed under court supervision, with non-compliance risking sanctions.
• Valued at a set hourly rate (often minimum wage), with hours applied against the outstanding LFO “sum of money.”

B. Equal Protection: “Threshold” Requirements vs. Levels of Scrutiny

Equal protection analysis has two main stages:

1. Threshold inquiries:
   • Is there state action?
   • Is there a cognizable right or interest affected?
   • Has the plaintiff identified a class or classification, and are they part of it?
   • Are they similarly situated to others with respect to the law’s purpose?
   • Have they suffered disparate treatment because of class membership?
2. Level of scrutiny (if threshold is satisfied):
   • Strict, intermediate, or rational basis, depending on whether the classification is suspect/semi-suspect and whether a fundamental or important right is implicated.

What is unusual here is that the majority ends the analysis at the first stage. It essentially says: “there is nothing constitutionally cognizable to scrutinize,” so it never tests the law or practice against any standard. The dissent argues that this is a misapplication of equal protection doctrine, given the substantial body of Washington case law dealing with wealth-based inequality in the criminal process.

C. Wealth-Based Classifications and Semi-Suspect Classes in Washington

Under federal law, wealth is generally not treated as a suspect or semi-suspect class. However, state constitutions can, and sometimes do, go further.

Washington’s article I, section 12 (“privileges and immunities”) and its equal protection cases have recognized that:

• When government action denies important interests (such as liberty, access to the courts, or restoration of rights) based on a person’s ability to pay,
• Those affected form a semi-suspect class not fully “accountable for its status,” and
• Intermediate scrutiny may apply.

Cases like Phelan, Mota, and Fogle have treated the inability to afford bail or other financial exactions as a quasi-suspect classification when it creates differential treatment in sentencing or custody.

The Danielson majority effectively narrows this line of cases by insisting on more concrete, case-specific proof that:

• The alternative of community service is actually wealth-based in practice; and
• Petitioners personally were indigent at the relevant times.

D. “State Action” in Equal Protection

The U.S. Constitution restrains only governmental, not purely private, conduct. Thus, equal protection claims require “state action.” Courts are state actors, as are most law enforcement and correctional agencies. Private nonprofits typically are not, unless they are performing a traditionally governmental function under close state control.

In this case:

• The labor itself was performed at private nonprofits, which complicates any unjust-enrichment theory.
• However, the key state action is not the work itself, but:
  • The court’s imposition and enforcement of LFOs,
  • The court’s decision to accept labor as payment, and
  • The court’s decision to deny monetary reimbursement for labor when a conviction is vacated.

Justice Mungia thus considers state action clearly present, while the majority hints at uncertainty mainly to reinforce the idea that the State never “received” the labor as a tangible benefit.

VII. Impact and Future Significance

A. Immediate Practical Consequences

The most direct effect of State v. Danielson is this:

• For Blake-affected defendants whose convictions have been vacated:
  • Cash paid toward LFOs based solely on the now-invalid conviction must be refunded (consistent with Nelson v. Colorado and the legislative Blake refund scheme).
  • Community service hours used to “pay down” those same LFOs will not be reimbursed, even at the minimum wage value courts previously used to credit them.

This affects:

• People who were particularly poor or financially unstable at the time of their convictions and enforcement proceedings,
• Those who participated in “pay or appear” programs and worked off LFOs via labor to avoid non-payment sanctions, and
• Municipal and county systems that had used community service heavily as an LFO payment alternative.

B. Equal Protection and Wealth in Washington Going Forward

Doctrinally, Danielson signals a cautious or restrictive approach to:

• Reading federal equal protection (and by extension, article I, section 12) to protect against all forms of wealth-based inequity in the criminal system.
• Extending Nelson v. Colorado beyond clear monetary property rights under due process.
• Recognizing “intermediate scrutiny” wealth classifications beyond the established contexts of pretrial detention, bail, and liberty deprivation.

Future litigants seeking to challenge wealth-based disparities (e.g. in fines, fees, or access to certain sentencing alternatives) may need:

• Robust, case-specific factual records showing the classification actually operates on wealth and does so systematically; and
• To consider framing claims under:
  • Article I, section 12 as a privileges-and-immunities claim more explicitly,
  • State due process, or
  • Statutory and policy arguments rather than U.S. constitutional equal protection alone.

C. Legislative Space and Policy Reform

Both the majority and Justice Yu underscore that:

• The decision addresses only what the federal constitution requires, not what is wise or just policy.
• The legislature retains full authority to:
  • Recognize the economic value of community service in Blake cases, and
  • Authorize refunds for labor at the valuation applied when it was credited.

Given the intense policy concerns around LFO burdens, poverty, and reentry, the decision is likely to spur:

• Advocacy for statutory mechanisms to compensate former defendants for community service performed under invalid convictions.
• Broader reconsideration of LFO systems, including:
  • Interest,
  • Collections practices, and
  • Use of community service as a default alternative for the poor.

D. Symbolic and Normative Implications

Symbolically, the decision reinforces a sharp line between:

• Money, which the law readily treats as a recoverable property interest when wrongfully taken; and
• Time and labor of poor people, which—despite being converted into money for purposes of paying a criminal debt—are not recognized as property interests worth compensating when the debt turns out to have been illegitimate.

Justice Mungia’s dissent frames this as a moral and constitutional failure, emphasizing that:

• LFOs “create prisoners of debt,”
• The burden falls disproportionately on those already in precarious economic circumstances, and
• Those who “have” are fully restored after Blake, while those who “have not” remain partially uncompensated.

The majority’s decision, while doctrinally modest, may be perceived as accepting this disparity as constitutionally irrelevant, leaving remedy to the legislature.

VIII. Conclusion

State v. Danielson clarifies, and limits, the scope of constitutional remedies available to individuals whose convictions have been invalidated under Blake:

• The federal Due Process Clause, as interpreted in Nelson v. Colorado, requires refund of money paid pursuant to an invalid conviction, and Washington has implemented that through the Blake Refund Bureau and court orders.
• The Equal Protection Clause does not, according to the majority, require reimbursement for community service labor used to pay LFOs, absent a recognized right to such reimbursement, a clearly defined wealth-based class, and evidence of disparate treatment grounded in that class.

The dissents—especially Justice Mungia’s—argue that under Washington precedents on wealth discrimination and important interests, this is a misstep: it fails to recognize an important right to be made whole when the State never had authority to impose financial obligations and unjustly treats poor defendants differently from wealthier ones. They would treat community service, once monetized for LFO credits, as functionally equivalent to money for refund purposes.

The decision leaves a clear path, however, for legislative action. As Justice Yu stresses, nothing prevents Washington from going beyond the constitutional floor and adopting a policy of:

• Recognizing the economic value of community service, and
• Providing refunds for labor expended under now-invalid convictions.

Until such a policy change occurs, Danielson stands for a stark principle: under current federal equal protection doctrine as applied in Washington, there is no constitutional right to be compensated for time and labor spent performing community service to satisfy LFOs imposed under convictions later held void—even though cash paid for those same obligations must be returned.