Class Action Lawsuit Claims Automatically Suspending Driver's Licenses Of Delinquent Child Support Payers Is Unconstitutional

A class action lawsuit is challenging the automatic suspension of driver’s licenses imposed on parents who are behind on their child support payments.

The civil suit, filed in state Superior Court Friday, claims that such suspensions are unconstitutional.

“It doesn’t make sense,” Davis said. “The idea that automatically suspending someone’s driver’s license because he is in arrears will force him to pay child support is an example of a well-intentioned, but not well thought-out law.”

The suit also claims the law is counter-productive.

“The suspension of a driver’s license prevents a parent from going to work, applying for a job, or seeing his children,” Davis said. “It’s absurdly self-defeating.”

The suit wants judges only to suspend a delinquent payer’s license only as a last resort, not as required punishment.

“Judges should have this as an option, but only if the facts of a case justify it,” Davis said.

The suit names Raymond Martinez, chief administrator of the New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission, state Acting Attorney General John Jay Hoffman and Director of the New Jersey Division of Family Development as defendants.

The case has been assignments to Judge Mary Jacobsen. A hearing on a preliminary injunction should be held in the next 10 days.

According to David Perry Davis, the attorney who filed the suit, New Jersey is the only state in the country that imposes such a penalty on motorists; he said that most states suspend an average of 250 licenses annually, but nearly 20,500 licenses were suspended in New Jersey last year. And nearly 99.5 percent of those licenses were suspended without a hearing being convened.