A U.S. District Court judge is refusing to dismiss a lawsuit against the Tennessee safety commissioner and granting class-action status for poor people whose licenses are suspended, trapping them in a cycle of “court debt.”
Judge Aleta Trauger, in an order filed in U.S. District Court in Nashville, ruled in favor of plaintiffs, James Thomas and David Hixson, who are among thousands of Tennesseans whose licenses were revoked for nonpayment of court fines, costs and litigation taxes.
The judge called Tennessee’s law “self-sabotage” and noted, “This court previously suggested that taking a person’s driver’s license away to try to make him more likely to pay a fine is more like using a shotgun to treat a broken arm. Maybe it is more like using the shotgun to shoot oneself in the foot.”
Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security Commission David Purkey is the sole remaining defendant in the case.
The lawsuit is similar to another case in which Johnny Gibbs and Fred Robinson of Murfreesboro and Ashley Sprague of Lebanon filed suit last year against Purkey, Rutherford County Circuit Court Clerk Melissa Harrell, Rutherford County, Wilson County Circuit Court Clerk Debbie Moss, Lebanon Municipal Court Clerk Corey Linville, Mt. Juliet City Court Clerk Susan Gaskill, Wilson County and the cities of Lebanon and Mt. Juliet.
Premal Dharia, director of litigation for Civil Rights Corps, a non-profit organization representing the plaintiffs alongside Just City, National Center for Law and Economic Justice and the law firm Baker Donelson, called the court’s opinion “an important acknowledgement of the daily reality that thousands of Tennesseans face.”
“When a person is deprived of her driver’s license simply because she is too poor to pay court debt, she can’t drive her kids to school, can’t drive to the doctor, and can’t drive to work, making it even harder to earn money to pay that debt. The law we have challenged is illogical, unjust and entrenches people in a cycle of poverty that is nearly impossible to escape. This ruling is a meaningful step toward justice for people across the state of Tennessee,” Dharia said in a statement.
Since 2012 when the statute dealing with license revocation took effect, the Tennessee Department of Safety has automatically revoked more than 146,000 driver’s licenses for failure to pay court debt, according to the lawsuit.
The suspension aren’t part of the punishment for traffic-related infractions but relate solely to debt collection. “Plaintiffs and class members in this case lost their licenses simply because of their poverty,” the lawsuit states.
In her decision, Trauger pointed out if the state’s “revocation scheme” applied only to debtors capable of paying but refusing to do so, a “rational relationship” might exist between the threat of revoking a license and the “legitimate interest” of collecting debt.
“That connection, though, falls apart where indigent debtors are concerned. Visiting a harsh consequence on ‘someone who through no fault of his own is unable to make’ the payment sought ‘will not make (payment) suddenly forthcoming,’” the judge wrote.
When the state revokes a person’s driving rights that doesn’t stop the person from needing to go to medical appointments, court dates or the grocery store, the judge pointed out.
“If the purpose of such a scheme were simply to lock indigent defendants into an endless cycle of greater and greater debt, it could be said to serve that purpose well,” Trauger wrote. “But Purkey, to his credit, does not assert that the state of Tennessee or his department has any legitimate interest in building inescapable debt traps for the indigent Tennesseans. Purkey, rather, claims that his department’s policies are in furtherance of debt collection. Toward that end, it is hard to say the policies are rationally calculated.”
The state attorney general’s office does not comment on pending lawsuits.
Sam Stockard can be reached at sstockard44@gmail.com.
