Immobilization as a Form of Punishment

In July, a federal judge struck down a Tennessee law that revoked the driver's licenses of people who could not afford to pay court fines and fees. Tennessee's law demonstrates the lengths to which governments will go to enforce payments of taxes and fees that criminal defendants must pay, also known as court debt. Courts have at times invalidated some of the more extreme methods of debt collection. Debtor's prisons, for example, have been unconstitutional in the U.S. since 1983, although the practice still continues today.

Rather than imprisonment, Tennessee attempted to use immobilization as a means of making people pay their debts. The logic of immobilization, however, is equally faulty. As Judge Trauger explains in Haslam v. Thomas, denying indigent defendants the ability to drive is not an incentive to pay off debts, it's an impediment, making the law both harsh and self-defeating.

The story of James Thomas, one of the lead plaintiffs in the case, illustrates the problems with the state's scheme. Thomas was homeless in 2013, so he took shelter one night under a bridge during a rainstorm. For attempting to stay dry during a storm, Thomas was arrested and charged with criminal trespass. He pled guilty in exchange for a thirty-day suspended sentence, and was assessed $289.70 in court costs. On the day of his plea deal, Thomas told the county clerk that he was homeless and did not have the money to pay the court costs.

A year later, the Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security (TDSHS) revoked Thomas's driver's license for "failure to pay litigation taxes, court costs and fines assessed by the court." The Department mailed Thomas a letter informing him his license had been revoked, which Thomas never received because it was mailed to his Nashville address where he no longer lived.

In 2016, Thomas went to TDSHS to get a new license, at which point he learned that the state had revoked his driving privileges for failure to pay his court debt. Moreover, TDSHS would only reinstate his license if Thomas paid both his court debt and an additional $65 reinstatement fee, an amount that is more than double the cost of a regular license in Tennessee.

Unable to pay back his debt, Thomas was left without a legal means of driving, and so he sued the state on behalf of both himself and a class of plaintiffs who have lost their licenses for failure to pay court debt. As the state conceded during the litigation, these debts can be substantial. Tennessee, like many states, charges individuals a series of taxes, fees, and fines for being involved in both civil and criminal litigation. These fees and fines, collectively called court debt, can range from $50 to several thousands dollars. Because the case deals only with the means of collecting court debt, it leaves unaddressed the need to reduce court debt in all its forms.

Despite the significant burden of repaying court debt, Tennessee has no system for screening defendants based on their ability to pay. Instead, the Department of Safety and Homeland Security automatically revokes the licenses of people who have more than a year of outstanding debt.

From 2012-2016, the state revoked over 146,000 driver's licenses for failure to pay court debt. Tennessee tried to defend the law on the grounds that it incentivizes people to pay off their debts. The numbers, however, show that this theory of repayment is dubious. Of the 146,000 licenses the state revoked, only 10,750 were later reinstated, or barely 7% of the total number. As the court explained: "[i]f Tennessee's revocation law were capable of coercing people into paying their debts in order to get their licenses back, it would be doing so. The overwhelming majority of the time, it is not."

Judge Trauger's opinion draws on a series of cases that have established various constitutional protections for the poor. For example, in Williams v. Illinois, the Supreme Court invalidated an Illinois statute which extended the maximum prison sentences for defendants who were unable to pay fines arising out of their convictions. The Court explained that because "only a convicted person with access to funds can avoid the increased imprisonment, the Illinois statute in operative effect exposes only indigents to the risk of imprisonment beyond the statutory maximum. By making the maximum confinement contingent upon one's ability to pay, the State has visited different consequences on two categories of persons since the result is to make incarceration in excess of the statutory maximum applicable only to those without the requisite resources to satisfy the money portion of the judgment"

Judge Trauger reached a similar conclusion in Haslam. She found that the license revocation scheme gave defendants with financial resources a choice ("pay or lose your license"). However, for indigent defendants, the law functioned essentially as a sentence enhancement, stripping them of their ability to drive based on their inability to pay, rather than their unwillingness to do so.

The opinion is also notable for its lengthy discussion of the importance of mobility in daily life. Judge Trauger delves into the statistics on transportation in Tennessee, where 93% of people drive to work, and public transportation is inadequate or nonexistent in much of the state. She makes clear that in Tennessee, as in much of America, driving is crucial for economic self-sufficiency, as well as for accessing basic necessities like medical appointments.

A classmate brought Haslam v. Thomas to my attention, and it resonated with me in part because of how it can inform our understanding of other restrictions on mobility. For example, forty-seven states have laws suspending or revoking licenses for failure to pay child support. Some of these laws provide exemptions based on ability to pay, but others do not.

In New Haven, where I live, the government has aggressively stepped up its use of towing and booting cars as part of its "Tax and Tow" program. New Haven was the second local government in the nation to employ the "bootfinder," a device that automatically scans license plates in order to identify cars with outstanding vehicle taxes and parking tickets. The city then impounds the car or affixes a boot to it in order to prevent the owner from using the car until the back-taxes are paid.

While tax collection is important, immobilization is a particularly severe form of punishment, a fact that is well-understood by the people who experience it. The city's former Assistant Assessor put it this way: "A person's house could burn down, and they'll deal with it. But if you tow their car, they go nuts. I've seen it happen here. You can always crash at a friend's house, but you can't necessarily always get to work."

Judge Trauger's opinion in Haslam captures the ways in which preventing people from getting to work is not only harsh, it's counterproductive if the goal is to enable them to pay down their taxes.

Haslam is one of a series of recent cases that have expanded constitutional protections for the poor. Last week, the Ninth Circuit ruled that localities cannot prosecute homeless people for sleeping outside when homeless shelters are full. As the court explained: "As long as there is no option of sleeping indoors, the government cannot criminalize indigent, homeless people for sleeping outdoors, on public property, on the false premise that they had a choice in the matter." And the Seventh Circuit recently found that panhandling is protected by the First Amendment.

Even though there is no constitutionally-protected right to transportation, it's heartening to see the strides being made to eliminate punishments that deprive people of essential needs like shelter and mobility.