do you remember the last time you got a
traffic ticket let me tell you about
mine it was a few years ago summer time
my family and I were driving back from
the beach we got lost looking for the
highway entrance ramp we turned a corner
boom sirens and flashing lights the
officer said we made an illegal turn and
the ticket was around a hundred and
fifty dollars we thought about
challenging it but we decided we
probably loose after all we did make the
turn so it was expensive and it was
annoying but we paid the ticket and we
moved on with our lives now I want to
tell you about my client Ashley Ashley’s
a single mom back in April 2015 she was
having a really tough time she was
working as a server at the Waffle House
making two thirteen an hour and it
wasn’t enough to support her family
one night when Ashley was driving home
from work she caught a speeding ticket
and she didn’t have the money to pay she
asked the court for a payment plan the
court said no no payment plans for
traffic tickets so what could she do she
didn’t have a choice she couldn’t pay
and she didn’t pay well unfortunately
about a year later Ashley got another
ticket and that’s when she learned her
license was suspended because she didn’t
pay the first one along with the ticket
the officer charged her with driving on
a suspended license which is a criminal
misdemeanor and carries with it more
fines and fees and the possibility of
jail time
well now that Ashley knew she didn’t
have a license she didn’t dare drive a
second driving on suspended charge could
easily put her in jail and then she
would lose custody of her children but
without driving she didn’t have a way to
get to work
and she tried catching
from friends and family but that was
hard then sometimes she would wait for
hours after her shift was over until
somebody could come and pick her up and
sometimes nobody came and she would have
to take a taxi home and that cost more
than she earned in an entire day she
couldn’t get to work reliably and
finally her boss told her not to come in
anymore her boss said she’d be welcome
to have her job back
once she resolved her transportation
situation without a job Ashley moved
back in with her parents and she worked
part time for their cleaning business
because they could drive her back and
forth to work her children lived with
their other grandparents about 30
minutes away and Ashley would go for
weeks and sometimes more than a month
without seeing them because she didn’t
have a ride her parents paid her about a
hundred and fifty dollars a week but her
expenses were more like two hundred
dollars a week so to make up the
difference she would work odd jobs when
she could but mostly she didn’t eat when
I first met Ashley this situation had
already been going on for a year she
just couldn’t find a way out now there’s
a name for Ashley’s situation it’s
called the cycle of poverty you can’t
pay your tickets so you lose your
license without your license you can’t
hold down a job and without a job you
can’t earn the money that you need to
pay the tickets but it doesn’t have to
be this way some states Mississippi
California have recently decided to stop
these harmful suspensions but 42 states
including Florida still punish drivers
for their poverty by taking their
drivers licenses right now there are
more than a million people in the state
of Florida who cannot drive at all not
because they’re bad drivers
because they’re too poor to pay traffic
tickets and it gets worse according to
the American Association of motor
vehicle administrators three-quarters of
drivers with suspended licenses just
keep driving
well can you blame them think about your
own life how would you get to work or
buy groceries or take your kid to the
doctor if you couldn’t drive uber isn’t
an option for low income people and in
most parts of the country
public transportation isn’t a viable
option either there’s a reason that
according to the US Census Bureau 85% of
Americans drive to work the problem is
that if you’re driving on a suspended
license and you get stopped again you’ll
be criminally charged and your debts
will compound that financial hole you
need to climb out of will be deeper than
ever and you may even go to jail because
you can’t pay now the cycle of poverty
looks like this last year in
Jacksonville the state attorney
prosecuted nearly 12,000 people just
like Ashley for driving on a suspended
license what a waste of law enforcement
resources and that’s just one
medium-sized city can you imagine how
many millions of people all across the
country are stuck in this nonsensical
debt trap and then you have to consider
racial bias police ticket black people
more than any other group and it is not
because they’re worse drivers in Florida
the ACLU found that police gave seatbelt
tickets to black drivers twice as often
as white drivers even though blacks and
whites use seatbelts at about the same
rates when police target low-income
community
of color for traffic enforcement which
they often do license suspensions
inevitably follow so it’s not just a
vicious cycle
it’s a discriminatory cycle and it has
to stop the good news is that momentum
is growing across the country to end
these harmful suspensions in
Jacksonville the state attorney launched
a promising diversion program and
there’s a bill pending in the Florida
Legislature that would help a lot of
people if it passes by mandating access
to affordable payment plans and payment
alternatives like community service and
we know from a successful program in
Palm Beach County that affordable
payment plans work to help people pay
down debt and avoid suspension there the
county reduced suspensions by 79 percent
just by letting people pay as little as
five dollars a month if that’s what they
can afford but these measures though
welcome
don’t go nearly far enough we must
reconsider the fines themselves why not
set them based on ability to pay a
traffic ticket is supposed to be an
expensive annoyance you pay it you move
on hopefully you drive more carefully in
the future but we don’t all have the
same financial means and my annoyance it
could be your financial calamity a
traffic citation shouldn’t be a one-way
ticket to an endless spiral of debt jail
poverty I want to tell you a little more
about Ashley because her story has a
happy ending
I work at an organization called the
National Center for law and economic
justice we’re a national nonprofit based
in New York City working at the
intersection of civil rights and poverty
and about a year ago we along with our
partners at Civil Rights Corps just City
and Baker Donaldson sued the state
of Tennessee on behalf of Ashley and
many others who were deprived of their
licenses without consideration of their
ability to pay and thanks to that
lawsuit Ashley got her license back not
only that but just three days ago the
court entered an order granting that
same opportunity to two hundred and
ninety one thousand low-income Tennessee
today Ashley is working again and her
family has been reunited she even
started nursing school a step that would
have been impossible without a driver’s
license when Ashley graduates she is
going to get a good job when that pees
enough to support her family and even
repay traffic debt that’s the power of a
driver’s license all around the country
there are millions of people who cannot
live their lives go to work
provide for themselves and their loved
ones because they have traffic debt they
can’t afford to pay but communities are
coming together to repeal these harmful
suspension laws and I urge you to
support these efforts let’s break this
vicious cycle [Applause]
traffic ticket let me tell you about
mine it was a few years ago summer time
my family and I were driving back from
the beach we got lost looking for the
highway entrance ramp we turned a corner
boom sirens and flashing lights the
officer said we made an illegal turn and
the ticket was around a hundred and
fifty dollars we thought about
challenging it but we decided we
probably loose after all we did make the
turn so it was expensive and it was
annoying but we paid the ticket and we
moved on with our lives now I want to
tell you about my client Ashley Ashley’s
a single mom back in April 2015 she was
having a really tough time she was
working as a server at the Waffle House
making two thirteen an hour and it
wasn’t enough to support her family
one night when Ashley was driving home
from work she caught a speeding ticket
and she didn’t have the money to pay she
asked the court for a payment plan the
court said no no payment plans for
traffic tickets so what could she do she
didn’t have a choice she couldn’t pay
and she didn’t pay well unfortunately
about a year later Ashley got another
ticket and that’s when she learned her
license was suspended because she didn’t
pay the first one along with the ticket
the officer charged her with driving on
a suspended license which is a criminal
misdemeanor and carries with it more
fines and fees and the possibility of
jail time
well now that Ashley knew she didn’t
have a license she didn’t dare drive a
second driving on suspended charge could
easily put her in jail and then she
would lose custody of her children but
without driving she didn’t have a way to
get to work
and she tried catching
from friends and family but that was
hard then sometimes she would wait for
hours after her shift was over until
somebody could come and pick her up and
sometimes nobody came and she would have
to take a taxi home and that cost more
than she earned in an entire day she
couldn’t get to work reliably and
finally her boss told her not to come in
anymore her boss said she’d be welcome
to have her job back
once she resolved her transportation
situation without a job Ashley moved
back in with her parents and she worked
part time for their cleaning business
because they could drive her back and
forth to work her children lived with
their other grandparents about 30
minutes away and Ashley would go for
weeks and sometimes more than a month
without seeing them because she didn’t
have a ride her parents paid her about a
hundred and fifty dollars a week but her
expenses were more like two hundred
dollars a week so to make up the
difference she would work odd jobs when
she could but mostly she didn’t eat when
I first met Ashley this situation had
already been going on for a year she
just couldn’t find a way out now there’s
a name for Ashley’s situation it’s
called the cycle of poverty you can’t
pay your tickets so you lose your
license without your license you can’t
hold down a job and without a job you
can’t earn the money that you need to
pay the tickets but it doesn’t have to
be this way some states Mississippi
California have recently decided to stop
these harmful suspensions but 42 states
including Florida still punish drivers
for their poverty by taking their
drivers licenses right now there are
more than a million people in the state
of Florida who cannot drive at all not
because they’re bad drivers
because they’re too poor to pay traffic
tickets and it gets worse according to
the American Association of motor
vehicle administrators three-quarters of
drivers with suspended licenses just
keep driving
well can you blame them think about your
own life how would you get to work or
buy groceries or take your kid to the
doctor if you couldn’t drive uber isn’t
an option for low income people and in
most parts of the country
public transportation isn’t a viable
option either there’s a reason that
according to the US Census Bureau 85% of
Americans drive to work the problem is
that if you’re driving on a suspended
license and you get stopped again you’ll
be criminally charged and your debts
will compound that financial hole you
need to climb out of will be deeper than
ever and you may even go to jail because
you can’t pay now the cycle of poverty
looks like this last year in
Jacksonville the state attorney
prosecuted nearly 12,000 people just
like Ashley for driving on a suspended
license what a waste of law enforcement
resources and that’s just one
medium-sized city can you imagine how
many millions of people all across the
country are stuck in this nonsensical
debt trap and then you have to consider
racial bias police ticket black people
more than any other group and it is not
because they’re worse drivers in Florida
the ACLU found that police gave seatbelt
tickets to black drivers twice as often
as white drivers even though blacks and
whites use seatbelts at about the same
rates when police target low-income
community
of color for traffic enforcement which
they often do license suspensions
inevitably follow so it’s not just a
vicious cycle
it’s a discriminatory cycle and it has
to stop the good news is that momentum
is growing across the country to end
these harmful suspensions in
Jacksonville the state attorney launched
a promising diversion program and
there’s a bill pending in the Florida
Legislature that would help a lot of
people if it passes by mandating access
to affordable payment plans and payment
alternatives like community service and
we know from a successful program in
Palm Beach County that affordable
payment plans work to help people pay
down debt and avoid suspension there the
county reduced suspensions by 79 percent
just by letting people pay as little as
five dollars a month if that’s what they
can afford but these measures though
welcome
don’t go nearly far enough we must
reconsider the fines themselves why not
set them based on ability to pay a
traffic ticket is supposed to be an
expensive annoyance you pay it you move
on hopefully you drive more carefully in
the future but we don’t all have the
same financial means and my annoyance it
could be your financial calamity a
traffic citation shouldn’t be a one-way
ticket to an endless spiral of debt jail
poverty I want to tell you a little more
about Ashley because her story has a
happy ending
I work at an organization called the
National Center for law and economic
justice we’re a national nonprofit based
in New York City working at the
intersection of civil rights and poverty
and about a year ago we along with our
partners at Civil Rights Corps just City
and Baker Donaldson sued the state
of Tennessee on behalf of Ashley and
many others who were deprived of their
licenses without consideration of their
ability to pay and thanks to that
lawsuit Ashley got her license back not
only that but just three days ago the
court entered an order granting that
same opportunity to two hundred and
ninety one thousand low-income Tennessee
today Ashley is working again and her
family has been reunited she even
started nursing school a step that would
have been impossible without a driver’s
license when Ashley graduates she is
going to get a good job when that pees
enough to support her family and even
repay traffic debt that’s the power of a
driver’s license all around the country
there are millions of people who cannot
live their lives go to work
provide for themselves and their loved
ones because they have traffic debt they
can’t afford to pay but communities are
coming together to repeal these harmful
suspension laws and I urge you to
support these efforts let’s break this
vicious cycle [Applause]
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