John Galvan asked the court to dismiss his proposed class action accusing the IRS of improperly denying incarcerated individuals the advance delivery of coronavirus relief payments after he received a payment from the agency, according to the motion.
In his suit, filed in July, Galvan and another incarcerated individual, Patrick Taylor, argued that the IRS wrongly withheld the payments from incarcerated individuals. Attorneys for the men said that the government violated the law authorizing the payments passed by Congress when it prevented the distribution of them to inmates who qualified.
Those payments, equal up to $1,200 per adult and $500 per child, were authorized in March by the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act
, a $2.2 trillion stimulus bill to address the economic downturn caused by the novel coronavirus pandemic.The CARES Act includes no language that would prevent the IRS from distributing stimulus payments to incarcerated people, according to the complaint. But the agency released informal guidance following its passage in March that requested any payments made to prisoners be returned, the complaint said.
Taylor received a stimulus payment after the men filed the potential class action, and Taylor was dismissed from the suit in October when U.S. District Judge Joan B. Gottschall denied class certification for the suit, according to court documents.
In October, Judge Gottschall granted Galvan's request to stay his case until he too received an economic impact payment, or until a decision is reached on appeal before the Ninth Circuit in a similar case where a California federal judge ordered the IRS to distribute the payments to incarcerated individuals, according to court documents.
Legal representatives for the government and for Galvan didn't immediately respond to requests for comment.
Galvan is represented by Jeannie Y. Evans, Steve W. Berman, Zoran Tasic and Christopher R. Pitoun of Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP and by Michael Kanovitz, Sarah Grady, Scott Rauscher and Elliot Slosar of Loevy & Loevy.
The government is represented by James M. Strandjord of the U.S. Department of Justice, Tax Division.
The case is John Galvan et al. v. Steven T. Munchin et al., case number 1:20-cv-04511, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division.
--Editing by Joyce Laskowski.
For a reprint of this article, please contact reprints@law360.com.