$4 Million Settlement Reached in Class Action Challenge to Conditions at Shuttered St. Louis “Workhouse” Jail
by Chuck Sharman
It sounded like a jail from a 19th century novel: “infestations of insects, spiders and rodents”; “extreme and dangerous heat and humidity” in warm weather; exposure to “extreme cold” in winter months; “broken and missing windows”; “broken fixtures including showers, toilets and sinks”; “frequent flooding of sewage”; “black mold and mildew growing on walls”; “unsanitary and inadequate food.”
But this wasn’t fiction written by Victor Hugo. It was a description of St. Louis’ Medium Security Institution (MSI), immortalized in a settlement reached on April 10, 2025. The agreement resolved a class-action challenge to those unconstitutional conditions of confinement at the jail, which was built in 1960 and still known as the “Workhouse” when then-Mayor Tishuara Jones (D) ordered it closed in 2021.
As PLN reported, a group of former detainees filed the suit in 2017 in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri, eventually securing class certification. That was stripped away by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit in June 2024, only for the district court to grant Plaintiffs leave to file for new class certification the following October. [See: PLN, Jan. 2025, p.10.]
The parties then proceeded to reach their settlement agreement, which included a consent motion for certification of a class consisting of all those detained at the MSI for five or more days in total between November 13, 2012, and June 30, 2022. Those class members—a total estimated at 16,000 former detainees—will share a $4 million settlement fund, less deductions.
Those deductions include: $1,162,229 in fees and $170,971 in costs for class counsel, provided by attorneys with Arch City Defenders in St. Louis and DLA Piper LLP in Chicago; no more than $10,000 in service awards to each of the five named Plaintiffs, James Cody, Jasmine Borden, Michael Mosley, Diedre Wortham and Eddie Williams; and an amount of costs to be determined for Settlement Administrator Atticus Administration LLC.
Despite numerous attempts to advance the consent motion for class certification over the next six months after the agreement was inked, the district court had still not granted the settlement preliminary approval by the end of October 2025. But Arch City Defenders Executive Director defended it, telling the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that the agreement is “a really significant outcome.” Current Mayor Cara Spencer (D), who defeated Jones’ re-election bid, promised that her administration was “taking a look at the procedures and policies in place that have gotten us to this legal action.” See: Cody v. City of St. Louis, USDC (E.D. Mo.), Case No. 4:17-cv-02707.
The 65-year-old building housing the MSI was demolished in March 2025. Potential contamination of the 30-acre site likely means it won’t be put back to public use. A February 2024 report by a City-funded Reimagining the Workhouse Committee (RWC) included suggestions for repurposing the land as a go-kart track, a museum or a renewable energy facility. See: Re-envisioning the Workhouse, RWC (2024).
Additional source: St. Louis Post-Dispatch
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Related legal case
Cody v. City of St. Louis
| Year | 2017 |
|---|---|
| Cite | USDC (E.D. Mo.), Case No. 4:17-cv-02707 |
| Level | District Court |