Thousands of NC residents could get driver’s licenses back after settlement approved
Tens of thousands of low-income North Carolinians with suspended licenses could get their driving privileges back under the settlement of a longstanding class-action lawsuit accusing the state of violating their constitutional rights.
Under the agreement, which was approved Thursday by Chief U.S. District Judge Thomas Schroeder of Winston-Salem, the N.C. Division of Motor Vehicles will notify some 185,000 residents who lost their licenses after failing to pay tickets, court costs and other financial penalties.
The settlement doesn’t guarantee residents that they’ll automatically get their licenses back. Instead, the state will inform them that they have the right under N.C. law to argue in court they they didn’t pay their tickets solely because they couldn’t afford them. In such cases, a judge can order the DMV to restore a revoked license.
The complaint, filed by the ACLU and other groups in May 2018, claimed that the state violated the due process rights of mostly poor and minority drivers by suspending their licenses for failure to pay fees and not giving them a chance to explain their financial circumstances to a judge.
The consequences of a revoked license are severe, long lasting and widespread. Without driving privileges, thousands of North Carolinians have lost jobs, housing and had trouble finding food, medical care or getting their children to school. Many of those affected ignore the law and keep driving. That often leads to additional tickets and fines — and a deepening financial hole with the courts.
Michael Delgado, staff attorney for the ACLU of North Carolina, said the settlement should lessen “the harms of the unnecessarily harsh and punitive practice of revoking people’s drivers’ licenses because they are not wealthy, a practice which has disproportionately affected people and communities of color.”
“People should know that there’s a process to request a court hearing and possible relief if they believe their driver’s licenses were wrongly revoked. The public should have clear information about their rights to a state court hearing regarding their ability to pay traffic-related fines and costs before their license is taken away from them,” Delgado said.
While they applauded the settlement of the case, advocates and legal experts say it benefits only a fraction of the N.C. residents currently hamstrung by a suspended license.
A 2021 study by the Wilson Center for Science and Justice at Duke University, titled “Driving Injustice,” found that more than 1.2 million N.C. drivers have lost their licenses for either not paying their tickets and court costs, failing to show up in court for their hearings, or a combination of both. That’s 15% of the state’s driving age population. The study analyzed statewide court data from between 1986 and 2018.
According to the study’s co-author, Duke law professor Brandon Garrett, the settlement sidesteps the largest category of victims: the estimated 827,000 drivers who failed to appear in traffic court to answer charges. Many of them either did not know of their hearings or didn’t show up because they couldn’t afford to pay the tickets, Garrett said.
In a phone interview with The Charlotte Observer, Garrett nonetheless described the lawsuit settlement as “an important start.”
“But I hope people understand that there is a larger underlying problem.” he said. “There’s not a lot of public transportation in North Carolina. Most people need to be able to drive to lead their lives.”
Jennifer Lechner, executive director of the N.C. Equal Access to Justice Commission, an offshoot of the state Supreme Court that is working with district attorneys to forgive court debt and restore driver’s licenses, says most suspensions have a common cause: poverty. That includes so-called “failure to appear” cases.
“It is important for the integrity of the judicial system and our communities that people come to court when they are told to do so,” Lechner told the Observer in an email. “However, just like unpaid fines and fees, the root cause of a large number of failures to appear is a lack of financial resources.
“We hear from clients that they missed court because they couldn’t get transportation, couldn’t get off work, or couldn’t find childcare or that they were intimidated by the court process and were afraid to come to court without an attorney. It is my belief that greater equity and transparency around the issuance of fines and fees would also encourage people to show up.”
Restored licenses in Charlotte area
Under her agency’s license-restoration efforts, Lechner says district attorneys in 14 N.C. counties — including Mecklenburg — have helped restore the driving privileges of thousands of North Carolinians by forgiving their court debt.
While Mecklenburg County District Attorney’s Office was not a party of lawsuit, DA Spencer Merriweather “has long believed that we are far past due in divorcing financial debt from the ability to drive,” according to an office statement to the Observer. Under the office’s Operation Debt Relief, which started in 2019, prosecutors filed motions to forgive debt in some 13,650 cases involving about 11,000 defendants. The effort continues, the statement said.
According to Garrett’s study, license suspensions disproportionately affect minority drivers. While Black residents make up 21% of the state’s driving population, they accounted for 47% of the suspensions in 2013-17 for failure to pay. Whites, who make up almost two-thirds of the state’s drivers, had 37% of the suspensions for unpaid tickets and other financial reasons.
Two of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, which was filed in 2018 against DMV Commissioner Torre Jessup by a number of civil rights groups, live in the Charlotte area. In court filings, Seti Johnson and Sharee Smoot, who are both Black and live in Cabarrus County, said their lives were turned upside down when they lost their licenses.
According to Johnson’s declaration, he was pulled over in the summer of 2017 and told his license had been suspended for failing to pay off old tickets, said he was forced to use his rent money to pay some $700 in fines, court costs and late fees. He says he’s lost his housing and had to move in with his mother.
Likewise, Smoot said in her 2018 declaration that her license was suspended at the time because she couldn’t afford to pay some old ticket.
Smoot, a single mother of a daughter, had moved in with her grandmother because she couldn’t afford to pay rent. Her job at a call center, she said, was a 45-minute drive from her home.
“I do not have family members who can pick me up from, and drop me off at work,” she wrote. “So I am forced to make the difficult choice of losing my job or driving on a revoked driver’s license and risking more traffic tickets.”
About the license settlement
Under the terms of the settlement, the DMV promises to do a better job of contacting people facing the loss of their licenses and informing them of their rights.
The agency also has agreed to pay for the creation of a website that will provide information on preventing or overturning a license suspension for non-payment, including free legal help.
Lechner said the settlement provides “an important acknowledgment of the harm of suspensions for unpaid fines and fees ...”
“However, poverty-based license revocation is far from over,” she said. “We know that many people who are sent their notices will never receive them, many more will not be able to navigate the court system on their own ... and many of those who do will ultimately be denied relief.
“Meanwhile, these suspensions will continue to impact hundreds of thousands of North Carolinians.”
This story was originally published March 3, 2022 at 12:47 PM with the headline "Thousands of NC residents could get driver’s licenses back after settlement approved."
