Court Fines May Be At Root Of NC Residents' Suspended Licenses

A report from a group that advocates for the poor says that 1.2 million North Carolina residents' licenses are suspended or revoked.

The study suggests the reason is failure to pay court debt.

According to findings from the Legal Aid Justice Center, 43 states engage in the practice of suspending drivers' licenses due to outstanding court fees. The findings come a year after a class-action suit in Virginia alleging that the licenses of nearly a million residents were taken in an “unconstitutional scheme.”

The paper suggests that a system of this nature can trap people in a vicious debt cycle. For instance, if someone is unable to pay a ticket on time, a revoked license may then prevent them from getting to work to earn the money to eventually pay the fine, and so on.

But some states say the “fines are rational.”

In a similar class action case in Michigan, defendants argued that these costs are “long-standing, reasonable and permitted under the law.”