Doraville's Municipal Court fined Hilda Brucker and put her on probation for six months after giving her multiple citations for chipped paint on the fascia boards of her house, weeds in her backyard, ivy on a tree, vines on the house and cracked driveway pavement.

Jeff Thornton was served with an arrest warrant and fined $1,000 by Doraville because logs he stored in backyard for his woodworking hobby were not cut in 4 x 4 x 8 sections. There were also buckets, yard trimmings and a screen resting against the side of his house, all code violations.

Their experiences with Doraville's Municipal Court are not unique, but they are unconstitutional, according to a federal lawsuit filed Thursday against the suburban Atlanta city.

Doraville Municipal Court is also routinely flouting U.S. Supreme Court precedent by operating primarily as a revenue-generating device to keep the city government afloat, according to lawyers with the Institute for Justice, a public interest law group that sued on behalf of Brucker, Thornton and two other plaintiffs who were ticketed while driving through Doraville.

The plaintiffs are asking a federal judge to stop the city from ticketing and convicting residents and visitors in order to generate operating revenue.

Municipalities that rely on fines and forfeitures from traffic tickets and code violations to balance their budgets create financial incentives to ticket, convict and fine people, according to the lawsuit. That's what Doraville, population 8,330, is doing, according to the suit.

“This financial incentive to convict infects Doraville's municipal court with a bias or an appearance of bias in violation of the U.S. Constitution,” the suit contends.

Doraville City Manager Regina Williams-Gates was in a closed-door meeting Thursday and could not be reached for comment.

“Doraville is one of the worst ticketers in the country,” said Joshua House, an attorney with the Institute of Justice. Frank Strickland of Atlanta's Strickland Brockington Lewis is local counsel.

A review of four years of city audits revealed that Doraville relies on municipal court fines for 24 percent or more of its annual revenues, according to the institute. The national average is 3 percent to 4 percent, House said.

House said a city finance expert the institute hired for similar litigation against the city of Pagedale, Missouri, said that, if municipal court fines make up more than 7 percent of a city's revenue, that would raise “red flags” about the constitutionality of its operations.

“You don't want to create a system where, if everyone obeyed the law, the city would be bankrupt,” House said.

According to the suit, between August 2016 and August 2017, Doraville's Municipal Court assessed approximately $3.84 million in fines. According to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, Doraville ranked sixth in the nation among cities with populations greater than 5,000 for the proportion of its city budget generated by court fines, fees and forfeitures.

The suit also cites a 2015 Doraville City Council report noting that an increase in municipal court dates “translate into additional revenues” and “resulted in increased collections.”

The suit also contends the city council has passed ordinances criminalizing misdemeanor code violations.The standard penalty for any violation of the Doraville Municipal Code is a criminal misdemeanor of up to $1,000 or six months in jail, according to the suit.

The city also retained architectural firm Clark Patterson Lee to police property code violations on its behalf, according to the suit.

The lawsuit also points to Doraville as one of Georgia's worst “speed traps,” citing a 2014 Atlanta Journal-Constitution investigation that reported Doraville police officers averaged 40 tickets a day—more per capita than any other metro Atlanta jurisdiction.

House said his organization has no data on whether Doraville police and code enforcement officers are targeting people of color.

“This is one of those issues where the color that is at issue in this case is green,” he said. “Our research has shown it has more to do with needing money.”