100,000 Michigander's a Year Have Their Drivers Licenses Revoked for Failure To Pay

Ready to hear a real-life October horror story?

Since 2010, 100,000 people in Michigan have had their Driver’s Licenses revoked each year solely because they were not able to pay their state fines and/or fees.

Michigan has connected all of its varied fines and fee payments to a wealth-based driver's license revocation scheme which was designed to incentivize debt repayment but in ways often entirely unrelated to criminal driving behaviors or to the improvement of public safety .

Unfortunately, for people struggling to make ends meet, these fees can often become unmanageable and the collateral costs of losing a drivers license can end up much larger than the costs of the fines or fees themselves.

There is reform on the horizon, but will it be enough?

The Problem Is Massive

Michiganders are subject to one of the five worst drivers license revocation schemes in the United States.

Michigan’s statutory scheme:

* Makes revocation possible for many reasons beyond moving violations (you can have your license revoked for failure to pay court fees, criminal sanctions, drivers responsibility fees, and virtually any other kind of fines or fee).

* Applies indefinite (not time-limited) revocation (you have to pay off your entire debt plus a $45 Drivers Licence Clearance Fee before you can get your license restored).

* Does not take into account (at all) your ability to pay.

In addition, the challenging of these fines and fees relies, for many, on one of the worst systems of indigent defense in the entire country .

And, if that weren’t enough, many Detroiters, for instance, are often subject to a bad system of public transportation and to large job sprawl .

The scope of the problem is massive and predatory as Slate’s Henry Grabar explained recently:

”Suspended license violations accounted for about half the state’s responsibility fees. Many of those people had their licenses suspended not for dangerous driving but because they were broke and couldn’t pay fees they had previously been assessed—in some cases, court debt for nondangerous offenses like parking tickets. The fee is a way that Michigan, after punishing debtors with license suspension, binds license suspendees with debt. The state had set a trap for hundreds of thousands of low-income residents. Without a license, drivers can find it nearly impossible to make the money to pay the fines and the ever-compounding late fees. Many of those caught driving with a suspended license—more than 40,000 Michiganders every year—find themselves drowning in debt .

Michigan’s Legislature To The Rescue?

About a week ago, Michigan House Speaker Tom Leonard announced a set of bills designed to address this growing problem by accelerating an already-passed 2019 phase-out and amnesty program by one year.

The new package of reforms is a great idea and will help relieve hundreds of millions in unpaid debt allowing tens of thousands to restore their licenses.

Even better, odds of passage appear to be good as reporter Chad Livengood, who was responsible for shining a spotlight on the issue over the last few months, mentioned to me during a recent Twitter discussion.

I fully support this legislation, it is a great start towards fixing a huge problem. But we need to remember that it is only a start.

Driver’s Responsibility Fees are applied when drivers:

* Drive without a license

* Drive intoxicated

* Drive impaired

* Add points to their licenses above seven

But, there are many other reasons revocations can happen including (but not limited to):

* Traffic tickets

* Criminal justice fines and fees

* Court costs

Quite often, people come out of jail or prison drowning in court debt and facing housing and employment discrimination. Criminal justice fines and fees by themselves can often lock people who are formerly incarcerated into a cycle of poverty but drivers license revocation can ensure that this cycle becomes permanent.

My concern is that the current package of bills only addresses amnesty for the driver's responsibility fees and not for all the fines and fees related to revocations. Hopefully, the legislature will continue to take steps beyond the current legislation and free all Michigander’s from this wealth-based scheme before more people get caught up in this never-ending cycle of predatory debt collection.

If for whatever reason, the Legislature is unable to get the job done, Equal Justice Under Law has initiated a lawsuit challenging predatory driver’s license revocations in Michigan recently as well.

Let your legislators know what you think by finding and writing your State Congressperson or State Senator and ask them to ensure that no Michigan resident has their driver’s license revoked solely because of an inability to pay again.