50+ Institutions Call on U.S. Senate Leadership to Pass the Driving for Opportunity Act
The Collaboration for Justice—Chicago Appleseed and the Chicago Council of Lawyers—have signed on to a letter of support from the Free to Drive Coalition in support of bipartisan federal legislation, the Driving For Opportunity Act of 2020, reforming driver’s license suspension for non-driving violations.
This bill would help states end a counterproductive practice—suspending driver’s licenses simply because people cannot satisfy a financial obligation—and to enact smart, data-driven policy on fines, fees, and driving license privileges. Today, millions of Americans have a suspended or revoked driver’s license solely because they have not paid court fines and fees. Punitive suspensions over unpaid fees and fines are counter-productive, as studies in New Jersey, California, and at Harvard Law School have shown. The New Jersey study found that 42% of individuals lost their jobs following the suspension of their licenses, where an Illinois survey found job loss for half of suspended drivers. Driver’s license suspension for inability to pay simply creates an increased inability to pay by costing people their jobs.
Under federal law, a state will lose a portion of its federal highway funding unless it requires a 6-month suspension of a person’s driver’s license when convicted of a drug offense—even if the offense had nothing to do with driving. Although a governor may certify the state’s opposition to such a law in a letter to the Secretary of Transportation to bypass this requirement, over $25 million in state funding has been withheld under this statute. The Driving for Opportunity Act simply removes this policy from the federal code, allowing states to discontinue this harmful and nonproductive practice without require a certification of opposition.
Additionally, the Driving for Opportunity Act of 2020 also authorizes federal funding to cover the costs of reinstating driver’s licenses in states that chose to end debt-based driver’s license suspensions.
On July 1, this year, Illinois’ License to Work Act became effective. The License to Work Act was the result of years of advocacy and bipartisan support and ended—for Illinois—the practice of driver’s licenses for numerous issues such as the inability to pay fines and fees from parking and vehicle compliance tickets, and other non-moving violations. Years of research and investigation, including the United States Department of Justice report on policing in Ferguson, Missouri, have connected excessive ticketing and the imposition and collection of resulting fines and fees to wealth extraction from communities of color, abusive policing, and damage to communities’ trust in police and local government. Illinois’ License to Work Act was a critical step toward combating the high rate of bankruptcies caused by aggressive and racially disproportionate municipal ticketing and systems for collecting fines and fees.
The Driving for Opportunity Act will motivate other states to take this same step. California, Idaho, Kentucky, Mississippi, Montana, Virginia, West Virginia and Wyoming—and now Illinois—do not suspend driver’s license for unpaid fines and fees. We support this legislation as an important shift in the thinking about fines and fees, as well as the enforcement systems around them, toward equity.
