Sep 30, 2018 3 min read

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 128 million Americans drive to work every day – a full 85 percent of the country’s workforce. By comparison, just 36 percent of Britons solely use a car to get to work. In our far-flung country, with its spotty public transportation, most of the people who punch a clock find being able to drive a car an absolute necessity.

In Pennsylvania, you can get driving privileges taken away for the expected array of offenses, such as driving under the influence, reckless driving or violating insurance laws, but also for possessing small amounts of drugs. This means that someone could lose the right to drive – and lose their livelihood – if they’re engaged in something as trivial as puffing a joint on a park bench. Such a punishment hardly seems to fit the crime, especially at a moment when more and more states are moving toward relaxing their marijuana laws.

The commonwealth is just one of 12 states that carries out this draconian regime, but that could well change soon thanks to action by the Pennsylvania General Assembly. This is the result of two House bills passed overwhelmingly in April that would eliminate the suspension of a driver’s license for offenses not related to driving. The Senate’s transportation committee is expected to give its approval to the plan this week.

Laws that linked driver’s license suspensions to drug offenses were enacted in the heyday of the war on drugs in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Federal lawmakers approved a series of measures withholding money from states unless they enacted regulations that led to driver’s license suspensions for a menu of drug offenses. At the time, U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg, a New Jersey Democrat, confidently predicted that “the threat of losing driving privileges will give many prospective drug users a strong reason to think twice – particularly young people.”

However, a lawsuit filed against the commonwealth by the civil rights advocacy group Equal Justice Under the Law noted that Pennsylvanians who are poor or black are most likely to get their driving privileges taken away because the neighborhoods in which they live are the most likely to be policed. The suit also pointed out that the driver’s licenses of close to 149,000 Pennsylvanians were suspended in a five-year period between 2011 and 2016, and that such punishments are “irrational, counterproductive and discriminatory.”

Earlier this month, The York Daily Record detailed the case of one of that city’s residents who had his driver’s license suspended for a small-time drug offense. Mike Autry, who is 59 years old, had his driving privileges snatched away for having a marijuana joint tucked behind his ear when he was out walking with his girlfriend. Despite being ordered to serve 30 days probation, the handyman also had his license suspended for a whole year.

“It affects my whole life,” Autry told the newspaper. “Every time I get up and I want to go somewhere, I think about the fact that I should have a car and a driver’s license.”

If this legislation moves forward and is signed by Gov. Tom Wolf, it would be a clear victory not just for common sense, but for Pennsylvanians who have paid their debt to society and should be able to support themselves and their families.