Subverting the law: Traffic courts, driver’s license suspension reforms, and racial inequality

• In Event: Racial Disparities in Criminal Justice Decision-Making: Sentencing, Courts, and Policy Design

Abstract

Although the suspension of a driver’s license was originally intended to punish unsafe driving, most suspensions are now used to sanction people for failing to pay a ticket (FTP), to appear in court (FTA), or comply with other regulations. Over the last decade, twenty-six states have passed laws to limit failure to pay (FTP) suspensions out of concern that “debt-based” suspensions unfairly punish low-income drivers of color. Some states have also gone further by limiting suspensions for failure to appear in court (FTA) as part of more comprehensive reforms. Yet we know little about how these various reforms have affected the frequency of suspensions.

In this study, we evaluate driver's license suspension patterns in New York State before and after the implementation of the Driver’s License Suspension Reform Act (DLSRA), which ended FTP but not FTA suspensions in June 2021.  We obtained detailed NY-DMV records of 5.87 million suspension occurrences between April 2019 and February 2025 via Freedom of Information Law requests. These records identify the date and reason for the suspension, as well as the traffic court issuing the sanction. We combined this information with data on 12.36 million traffic tickets issued in the state over the same period, which we obtained from the New York Open Data Portal.

Descriptive statistics reveal three noteworthy changes that occurred after the DLSRA was implemented. First, the volume of traffic tickets across the state dropped from roughly 222,000 per month to 170,000 per month. It is possible that this decrease is the result of local and state law enforcement changing their ticketing practices in response to the law, or it could reflect a broader change in driving after the COVID-19 pandemic and policing reforms following George Floyd’s death. Second, the total number of driver’s license suspensions decreased after the DLSRA, from roughly 121,000 per month to 81,000 per month. This change primarily reflects the discontinuation of FTP suspensions following the DLSRA. However, we also find a third, important but unexpected change following the DLSRA. The average number of FTA suspensions increased from a rate of 46,000 to 48,000 per month before versus after the DLSRA. Although a relatively small percentage change (4%), this increase in FTA suspensions is noteworthy since it occurred during a period when traffic tickets declined by 23% statewide.

To further investigate these descriptive trends, we evaluate changes in suspensions per ticket using a shift-share instrument. This approach accounts for variation in the “dosage” of the DLSRA based on each court’s pre-reform tendencies to issue FTP suspensions. The model reveals that, indeed, the DLSRA increased rates of FTA suspensions, inducing a “substitution effect.” By increasing FTA suspensions even as FTP suspensions ended, that is, traffic courts subverted the equity-based goals of the DLSRA.

Authors

• Peter Rich, University of Wisconsin-Madison
  Presenting Author

• Maureen Waller, Cornell University
  Non-Presenting Co-Author