State’s high court strikes down license suspension laws

OLYMPIA — The Washington Supreme Court on Thursday tossed out two laws that have allowed the state to suspend driver’s licenses by mail without a hearing if the driver failed to pay a traffic fine.

The 5-4 ruling upheld a lower court’s dismissal of the cases of two men cited by Redmond police for driving with suspended licenses.

In separate cases, both men had their licenses suspended for failure to pay or otherwise deal with tickets for relatively minor traffic offenses. Both argued the suspensions violated their constitutional due process rights because they weren’t offered hearings.

One law has required such license suspensions for failure to deal with the tickets while another has allowed them to take effect 30 days after the Department of Licensing mailed out a notice. Hundreds of thousands of such notices go out every year.

The statutes “are contrary to the guaranty of due process because they do not provide adequate procedural safeguards to ensure against the erroneous deprivation of a driver’s interest in the continued use and possession of his or her driver’s license,” Justice Richard Sanders wrote for the majority.

State lawyers and the officials at the Department of Licensing were scratching their heads over the ruling on Thursday afternoon, trying to figure out whether they could comply by simply offering a hearing as part of the notice of suspension.

The ruling might require the Legislature to write a new law that provides for a hearing, Assistant Attorney General Gerald Anderson said.

“Since they’ve struck down the statutes, I’m not sure that there’s an administrative solution,” Anderson said.

In a stern dissent, Justice Bobbe Bridge said the decision “stretches the requirements of due process beyond precedent and common sense — establishing no clear benefit to licensees and burdening an administrative system designed by the Legislature to provide swift determination for the protection of the motoring public.”

The state had argued that motorists already have access to due process by going to court to contest the infraction that led to the suspension. It also argued that holding hearings for so many cases would impose too large a burden.

Chief Justice Gerry Alexander and Justices Barbara Madsen, Charles Johnson and Tom Chambers joined Sanders in the majority. Justices Faith Ireland, Susan Owens and Mary Fairhurst dissented with Bridge.

The case is No. 72614-1.