A proposed law is pending with the Legislative Reference Bureau that would end driver's license suspensions for failing to appear in court.

“Especially for failure to appear, there is such a severe spiral either into loss of employment or deeper into the criminal justice system or if you lose your employment, your credit gets impacted and your housing can get impacted. It's a very holistic issue,” Annika Cole, advocacy manager with Chicago Jobs Council (CJC), said. CJC promotes the right to work and helps to prevent people from becoming impoverished. 

The bill is in addition to the SAFE-T Act of 2021, which ended license suspensions based on failure to pay hidden camera or traffic ticket fines, and the License to Work Act of 2020, which halted driver’s license suspensions from parking ticket debt.

The 2021 SAFE-T Act is also known as House Bill 3653.

“We are pushing not only for the courts not to have this as an option, to suspend someone's license for failing to appear in court, but also to remedy the license suspensions of around 100,000 impacted individuals and to get those reinstated automatically,” Cole said.

CJC was among the advocates that pushed for the License to Work Act through the Transit Table Coalition.

“At Chicago Jobs Council we are working with partners to create an anti-racist workforce development system and employment equity. One of the ways we do this in our policy and advocacy work is by first acknowledging that many policies have created an inherent set of disadvantages for communities of color. We then advocate for the re-designing of these policies with a racially equitable lens in order to address past harms,” Dr. Lisa Bly-Jones, CEO, Chicago Jobs Council, told Southland Marquee. 

She described ending this system of suspensions as a CJC priority.

“We know that in Illinois, driver's license suspension for the inability to pay fines and fees of all kinds has had, and continues to have, a disproportionately negative impact on low-income communities and communities of color," she said. "That is why ending driver's license suspensions for fines and fees has been a focus of our work over the last several years."

Approximately 40% of people lose their jobs within a few months of their driver's license being suspended, according to a report posted on the Transit Table Coalition website called Shifting Suspensions in Illinois.

“When we analyze the data around license suspensions, fines and fees in general, it is not just failing to appear suspensions where we see the most impact in predominantly black and Hispanic ZIP codes, it is across the board of the data analysis we've done,” Cole told Southland Marquee. “There's work to be done on all levels in order to remedy that.”

In fact, data from the Secretary of State compiled in the winter of 2020-21 shows the suspension rate was 5 times higher among Black neighborhoods, and 3 times higher in Latinx neighborhoods, compared to white neighborhoods based on ZIP code calculations.

There were similar results in East St. Louis and across Illinois, and the Transit Table Coalition further alleges that drivers with a license suspension are drawn into the criminal system because they continue to drive.

Approximately 60% of motorists drive while being unaware their license has been suspended until they are pulled over by law enforcement, according to a 2017 survey.

“The system is not easy to navigate,” Cole said in an interview. “It’s not only too serious of a consequence for this initial traffic violation to suspend their license, but we also see that folks who aren't repeating visitors to the court system are pulled into the court system in this way. It is complicated and the consequence is too significant and severe.”

According to the License 2 Work website, steps forward, such as the 2021 SAFE-T Act, are impactful because using "driver’s license suspensions as a debt collection tool is ineffective, counterproductive and most harmful to people of color."

“We at the Chicago Jobs Council view fines and fees related and driver's license suspensions as a barrier to employment and don't support it. We believe folks should not be taken out of the workforce through fines and fees related issues,” Cole said.

On page six of a 2018 report by the Community Organizing and Family Issues (COFI) called Stopping the Debt Spiral, it is alleged that debt from unpaid traffic tickets that leads to a license suspension, disallows the person from getting a job. 

Although the city of Chicago provides payment plans to alleviate the impact, each is slightly different, according to Cole.

“We have heard from some of our partners some issues that folks have faced are that it has not been as easy to navigate,” she said. “There are different station kiosks throughout the city that I know folks can pay their ticket debt off at but from our partners, we've heard that impacted individuals have issues navigating these different pilot programs and the ticket debt relief pilot programs.”

Chicago is the only major U.S. city with a program that deactivates gig-workers, primarily ride-hail drivers, for their unpaid ticket debts.

For example, in 2019 alone, the city's policy required Uber and Lyft to suspend more than 15,500 people, according to NPR.

"Some of the things that we still need to work on fall under the issues that our Uber and Lyft drivers are facing," Cole said.

The 2018 ProPublica Illinois report also found Chicago issues more than 3 million tickets each year for a wide range of parking, vehicle compliance and automated traffic camera violations.

Average ticket costs range from $25 citations for broken headlights, to $250 tickets for parking in a zone for those with disabilities. Chicago ticket debt piles up disproportionately in the city’s low-income, mostly Black neighborhoods. Eight of the 10 ZIP codes with the most accumulated ticket debt per adult are majority Black, according to a ProPublica analysis of ticket data in Illinois since 2007 and figures from the U.S. Census.

Previous reporting has highlighted the impact of the city’s aggressive ticketing regime, most notably in the form of hundreds of city cameras across Chicago, which generate tens of millions of dollars a year for City Hall.

The cameras have come at a steep cost for motorists, particularly from the city’s Black and Latino neighborhoods, according to Block Club Chicago.

 As previously reported, a ProPublica analysis of millions of citations found that between 2015 and 2019, households in majority Black and Hispanic ZIP codes received tickets at approximately twice the rate of those in white areas.

Cook County, IL, has a city code in place that gives the city the right to revoke a business license if the owner does not pay or is unable to pay issued tickets. Sec. 54-391 of the Cook County Code of Ordinances states, "The license of any person who has failed to pay any fine, assessment of costs or other sums of money owed to the County pursuant to an order of the Department of Revenue, an order of the Department of Administrative Hearings or a court order, by the due date indicated in the order, or within 30 calendar days of becoming a debt due and owing may be suspended by the Department of Revenue, in accordance with its rules and after affording a hearing. The license shall be suspended until such time that the fine, assessment of costs, or other sums of money has been fully paid."