Post by ck4829 on Nov 12, 2016 16:43:36 GMT
The Justice Department filed a brief Monday supporting a class-action lawsuit that claims Virginia suspends poor people’s driver’s licenses in an “unconstitutional scheme,” court documents show.
In July, the class-action lawsuit, Stinnie et al. v. Holcomb, was filed in U.S. District Court in Western Virginia against the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles, claiming 940,000 people in the state have their licenses suspended for nonpayment of fines and court costs.
The lawsuit explained the plight of four named plaintiffs, including a 24-year-old Charlottesville man with lymphoma who became homeless after failing to pay about $1,000 in traffic fines.
“Hundreds of thousands of people have lost their licenses simply because they are too poor to pay, effectively depriving them of reliable, lawful transportation necessary to get to and from work, take children to school, keep medical appointments, care for ill or disabled family members, or, paradoxically, to meet their financial obligations to the courts,” the suit says.
The Virginia suit recalled criticism of law enforcement acting as collection agents for state and local governments in Ferguson, Mo., as detailed in a Justice Department report after the 2014 shooting of an unarmed black teenager there.
www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/justice-department-virginia-may-be-punishing-poor-by-suspending-drivers-licenses/2016/11/10/760930a6-a6c5-11e6-ba59-a7d93165c6d4_story.html
Cancer then becoming homeless? A perfect example of a cudgel.
