OAKLAND — About 54,000 drivers who live in Alameda County and had their license suspended for unpaid traffic tickets are getting some relief, and the right to drive again.

In a first for the state, Alameda County Superior Court on Monday reversed license suspensions for people who were penalized because they couldn’t afford to pay the fines. It’s the first county in the state to do so.

The court directed the Department of Motor Vehicles to lift suspensions for drivers who owe old failure to pay tickets and fines prior to June 2017. A state law, AB 103 kicked in after that making it illegal to suspend someone’s driver’s license solely because of their inability to pay. California began ramping up the practice in recent years to make up for state budget cuts and to pressure people who were delinquent into paying overdue tickets. According to advocacy groups, the license suspensions disproportionately affect poor people who simply don’t have the money.

“When people lose their licenses they overwhelmingly lose their jobs because 80 percent of Californians either drive to work or have to drive at work,” said Brittany Stonesifer, a staff attorney for Legal Services for Prisoners with Children, part of a coalition of legal groups that has taken legal action to help people who couldn’t pay citations get their licenses restored. “It also affects being able to take your kids to school or take a family member to the doctor. If you can afford to pay $500 to $800 and late fee you can move on, but for low-income and people of color, it creates this whole cycle of poverty.”

Hundreds of thousands of Californians have had their licenses suspended, and of those poor people are disproportionately impacted by the practice, according to a 2015 report, “Not Just a Ferguson Problem – How Traffic Courts Drive Inequality in California.”

Advocacy groups are pressing other counties to follow Alameda’s example. Unless they do, people who received license suspensions prior to the change in the law in June still cannot legally drive because the courts have not reversed their license suspensions nor directed the DMV to reinstate them.

A coalition of advocacy groups sued the DMV in October on behalf of low-income drivers who had lost their licenses. Stonesifer said the agency has since agreed to stop taking way licenses for nonpayment statewide but has not set a timeline.

Drivers whose licenses have been restored in Alameda County will still have to go through a DMV process in order to be able to legally drive.

“We are trying to determine what our best action would be to help all those people who are benefitting from this court action,” said Armando Botello, a DMV spokesman.

It’s unclear how drivers will be notified or whether they will have to pay fees. There is normally a $55 charge to get a license reinstated.

“That’s one of the things we’re trying to work out,” Stonesifer said. “Ideally, we want them to be notified that they’ve been restored, they won’t have to pay a fee and it will be as easy as possible for the person who has been harmed.”