Charlottesville’s Legal Aid Justice Center is challenging a system that they say is punishing the poor.

It’s filed a class action lawsuit in federal court, asserting that Virginia is crippling hundreds of thousands of low-income residents by suspending their driver’s licenses for failure to pay court costs and fines.

Legal Aid says our current approach is simply unconstitutional. It says the system needs to look at each individual’s financial situation on a case by case basis.

“And we came to realize that it’s really a system that’s been set up for a long time that just doesn’t work for a huge number of people,” Mary Bauer, executive director of the Legal Aid Justice Center, said.

Bauer is referring to a system which requires people involved in both criminal traffic cases, to pay court fines or else.

“Generally, if they don’t pay those costs within 30 days, their license is revoked automatically, without any person doing anything, it’s just revoked automatically, as a matter of law,” Bauer said.

Bauer says our current “system” doesn’t take in to account whether the person has the ability to pay these costs, calling it a “one-size-fits-all plan.”

According to the class action suit, each year since 2010, the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles issued more than 360,000 orders of suspension. Currently, 940,000 Virginians have a suspended license for failure to pay court costs and fines.

“And that has all kinds of consequences in their lives because, in this state in particular, you just need a driver’s license to get anything done, to get to work, to get to your doctor’s appointments, to take your kids to school,” Bauer said.

That’s why Legal Aid is asking the federal court to rule that this practice violates the due process and equal-protection clauses of the United States Constitution.

“We’re not asking people to get off scott-free, we’re asking for there to be a required placed in the system where a court or a judge or DMV looks at this and says, yes, this is reasonable, given this persons economic circumstance,” Bauer said.

The attorney general now has 21 days to respond to the suit.

Legal Aid tells me it wants to work proactively and positively to bring about change for people affected by this policy.