A D.C. law that prohibits drivers with more than $100 in unpaid tickets from renewing their licenses “penalizes poverty and and disproportionately impacts Black D.C. residents,” according to a new report from Tzedek D.C., a legal advocacy group that helps low-income residents with debt-related issues.

Two D.C. lawmakers recently introduced legislation that would stop the practice, following up on a 2018 bill that did away with license suspensions for drivers who did not pay certain traffic fines or failed to show up in court for a moving violation. That change alone resulted in the immediate reinstatement of nearly 66,000 driver’s licenses.

According to Tzedek’s report, D.C.’s current practice of not renewing driver’s licenses belonging to people with outstanding debt — part of the city’s Clean Hands Law — is a national outlier: only two other states (Illinois and Texas) have similar laws on the books. And while D.C. does not specifically collect data on the number and demographics of the people who can’t renew their licenses because of unpaid traffic tickets, the report estimates that up to 10% of the city’s population may be impacted.

“The available evidence strongly suggests that the D.C. residents harmed by the denial of driver’s licenses under the Clean Hands Law are disproportionately Black,” says the report. “More than 97% of the ‘fines and forfeitures’ the D.C. government collects each year come from parking and traffic tickets, and Black motorists in D.C. are ticketed disproportionately. At the same time, Black D.C. residents have, on average, fewer financial assets than white residents.”

According to Ariel Levinson-Waldman, Tzedek’s founder, parking and traffic tickets can be the start of a domino effect of impacts — after 30 days, an unpaid fine doubles; if it remains unpaid, the driver can’t renew their license; once that happens, they may either be forced to stop driving their car or take the chance and risk arrest.

“People have massively reduced job prospects both to get a job and to keep a job without a license. It also then makes it harder for people to do their basic day to day life like groceries, child care, and senior appointments,” he says. “We set people up through this policy because people need to drive for life and many residents, well over half of them who had a license and lost it, end up driving sometimes anyway because they have to do all of those things that life requires.”

The report found that Black D.C. residents are 19 times more likely than their white counterparts to be arrested for driving without a valid license. It also says that there’s no evidence to show that “withholding the driver’s license of someone who is too poor to pay will somehow push them to come up with money they do not have.”

The report recommends that D.C. reverse its current law and allow drivers with unpaid tickets to renew their driver’s license. A bill introduced this week by At-Large D.C. Councilmembers Elissa Silverman and Robert White would do just that.

“Wealth shouldn’t determine who gets to drive in this city,” says Silverman. “It’s a major workforce development issue in that if you can’t drive that really limit access to jobs, especially jobs that are somewhat entry-level in our cities.”

The issue of equity in traffic enforcement has become something of a recurring theme in the D.C. Council in recent years. Other than the 2018 law that did away with license suspensions for unpaid tickets, lawmakers also passed a bill that year extending the period drivers have to pay a ticket before it doubles from the current 30 days to 60 days. That measure has not yet gone into effect, though, since money hasn’t been identified to cover the estimated $124 million in lost revenue over four years.

D.C. officials did recently announce a four-month amnesty on parking and traffic tickets, during which anyone who has unpaid tickets can pay them without the usual late fees.(The last amnesty period was in 2012.) Drivers facing financial difficulties will also be allowed to enter into payment plans. City officials said earlier this year that as parking enforcement ramps back up after a pandemic lull, they wanted to be sensitive to the impacts parking and traffic tickets could have on people who were economically impacted by COVID-19.

“This continuing policy in the District leaves the way behind on an issue where we really should be and can be part of the wave of reform,” says Levinson-Waldman.