The Equal Protection Clause, of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, provides that “no state shall… deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” The Equal Protection Clause can be seen as an attempt to secure the promise of the United States’ professed commitment to the proposition that “all men are created equal” by empowering the judiciary to enforce that principle against the states.
A fundamental principle behind this clause is that when two people are accused of having committed the same offense, they should receive equal punishment, all other circumstances being similar. Another way to say this is that the punishment for the same offense shouldn’t differ based socio-economic class, residence, gender, race, etc.
The Traffic Abusers provision of HB 3202, calls for drivers convicted of misdemeanors to pay the customary fines, plus some outrageous civil penalties in excess of $1,000 that will be collected over a three year period. Furthermore, drivers with more than eight demerit points on their driving record will be subjected to additional civil penalties that will be collected annually.
If HB 3202 is enacted into law, the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) will be responsible for issuing notices and collecting the surcharged civil penalties. However, HB 3202 is silent as to how these penalties will be collected from drivers that commit traffic infractions in Virginia but who are licensed in another state.
The Virginia DMV has no authority over drivers from other states. The courts will be able to collect the traffic fine and perhaps the civil penalty due for the first year, but will be unable to collect the civil penalties in succeeding years, unless the offender pays them voluntarily.
Additionally, the fact that the DMV will have no access to the out-of-state driver’s history, they will be unable to assess or collect the additional penalties called for under HB 3202 from out-of-state drivers that have more than eight demerit points on their records.
These disparate treatments of out-of-state vs. in-state drivers place the traffic abuser provisions called for under HB 3202 on a collision course with the equal protection clause. If this bill gets enacted, any Virginia driver facing these civil penalties could and should challenge them in federal court.