## Facts

- Family Finance Corporation sued Christine Sniadach in Wisconsin on an alleged $420 promissory note debt.
- Family Finance initiated a prejudgment garnishment action against Sniadach and served her employer as garnishee.
- Under Wisconsin procedure, the court clerk issued a garnishment summons at the creditor’s lawyer’s request; service on the employer triggered a freeze of one-half of Sniadach’s wages.
- The employer reported holding wages and paid one-half to Sniadach as a subsistence allowance while withholding the remainder subject to court order.
- The statute allowed the plaintiff up to 10 days after serving the garnishee to serve the summons and complaint on the defendant; Sniadach was served the same day as her employer.
- Sniadach moved to dismiss, arguing the prejudgment garnishment violated the Fourteenth Amendment because it occurred without prior notice and a hearing.
- Wisconsin courts upheld the procedure, and Sniadach sought review.

## Issues

1. Whether a state may permit prejudgment garnishment of a wage earner’s wages through an ex parte process that freezes wages without prior notice and an opportunity to be heard.
2. Whether post-seizure notice and the possibility of later prevailing on the merits satisfy procedural due process when wages are restrained before judgment.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court reversed the Wisconsin Supreme Court.
- The Court held Wisconsin’s prejudgment wage-garnishment procedure unconstitutional because it effected a taking of property without prior notice and hearing.
- The Court reasoned that freezing wages imposes serious hardship and deprives the wage earner of earned pay while preventing any immediate opportunity to present defenses.
- The Court rejected treating routine debt collection as an “extraordinary situation” justifying postponement of a hearing; the statute was not narrowly drawn to meet any unusual condition.
- The Court noted the largely automatic, nonjudicial initiation of the freeze—triggered by the creditor’s lawyer through service on the employer—heightened due process concerns.

## Legal Principles

- Procedural due process generally requires notice and an opportunity to be heard before the state authorizes a significant deprivation of property.
- Wages are a form of property whose restraint can cause immediate and severe hardship, strengthening the need for pre-deprivation process.
- Post-seizure procedures and eventual adjudication on the merits do not, by themselves, cure an initial deprivation imposed without a prior hearing.
- Pre-hearing seizures may be permissible only in limited “extraordinary situations” involving special governmental or creditor interests and narrowly tailored procedures; ordinary consumer debt collection does not qualify.
- Minimal judicial oversight and ex parte, clerical initiation of prejudgment restraint weigh against constitutionality.

## Conclusion

The Court held that Wisconsin’s ex parte prejudgment garnishment of wages violated the Fourteenth Amendment because it froze a wage earner’s earned pay without prior notice and a hearing, outside any narrowly defined extraordinary circumstance that could justify delaying process.


Sniadach v. Fam. Fin. Corp., 395 U.S. 337 (1969)