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Ohio suspends roughly 3 million driver's licenses for debt-related reasons annually.
Two proposed bills could alleviate the burden of debt-related driver's license suspensions by granting people behind on child support payments some driving privileges. House Bill 29 and Senate Bill 37 would allow Ohioans in such cases to petition the court for limited driving privileges.
“The imposition of a suspension on the individual's driver's license would effectively prevent the individual from paying child support or any arrearage due under the child support order that was in default,” both bills say.
Representative Darnell Brewer, whose House District 18 includes some of Cleveland's poorer eastside neighborhoods as well as Garfield Heights and Maple Heights, is a co-sponsor of H.B. 29 and says the suspensions are a “huge issue.”
“That’s the general thrust of the bill: to go after those things that are unrelated to actual driving that you might get your license suspended for and then it’s just going to put you in this downward spiral if you can’t drive and you can’t make a living for yourself,” Blessing said.
Every year about three million driver’s license suspensions in Ohio are due to missing child support payments and other debt-related reasons like failing to pay court fines and not having proof of insurance, according to
a report by the Legal Aid Society of Cleveland.
And that impact can be especially hard on marginalized communities. The report concluded that debt-related suspensions cost residents of Ohio’s ZIP codes with the highest poverty rates an average of nearly $8 million annually and residents of Ohio’s ZIP codes with the highest percentages of people of color an average of roughly $12 million annually.
In Cleveland, the 44104 ZIP code in the Kinsman area has a high poverty rate and is a majority minority neighborhood with a large Black population.
It also has one of the highest rates of driver’s license suspensions in Ohio and, according to research presented by associate professor of urban studies at Cleveland State University and Legal Aid Society attorney Anne Sweeney, between 2016 and 2020 its residents were among the most likely to call 211 for help with transportation.
“It is a public safety issue, because as we look around the country, and even in Ohio, traffic stops turn into deadly stops for people that look like me, African American men of color, because they have traffic infringements,” Brewer said. “They're more likely to run from the police because they don't want to go back to jail or be antagonized, so this is not just a getting to work, getting school, taking your kids to school, going grocery shopping and going to a doctor appointment issue, it’s an all-around safety issue as well.”
In addition to allowing drivers with child support-related license suspensions to petition for limited driving privileges, the senate bill would also bar the court from suspending the driver’s licenses of people convicted of certain drug-related crimes.
Brewer is optimistic that the house bill will pass with bipartisan support after it garnered unanimous approval in committee. The senate bill hasn’t advanced as far and is still in committee but with support from the Cincinnati NAACP, Citizens for Community Values, Ohio Poverty Law Center, Americans for Prosperity and the Buckeye Institute, Blessing thinks it will pass.
“A lot of people are just stuck. They can’t drive, they can’t make money to pay off the fines, which are relatively stiff for somebody who’s poor but they can’t get the money to do that if they can’t get to work so getting some major fixes in this area would be very beneficial and I think it would be broadly supported by really both sides of the aisle."
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