Posted February 25, 2025
9:20 am
With the signing of House Bill 29 in January 2025, Ohioans will no longer have their licenses suspended because of inability to pay debts. This victory came after many years of research, education, and partnership.
Legal Aid’s client community has been heavily impacted by debt-related driver’s license suspensions. Beginning in 2018 – aligned with the rise of gig economy food delivery and driving services – Legal Aid’s website statistics indicated more people were searching (and visiting the website) for information on “getting a driver’s license back” and “debt-related suspensions.” In addition, more individuals were calling Legal Aid seeking help to get their license back after a debt-related suspension. These debt-related suspensions have nothing to do with dangerous driving and trap people with limited means in an impossible cycle: they need to get to work, but they no longer have a valid license, so they cannot get to work, thus they cannot make the payments to reinstate their license.
According to a recent Federal Reserve Bank Community Development report, license suspensions have a significant impact on Ohio’s labor force. For example, in 2022 the share of job ads requesting a driver’s license in Ohio (14.0%) was higher than the national average (10.6%).
In 2022, Legal Aid partnered with Dr. Brian A. Mikelbank, an Associate Professor of Urban Studies at Cleveland State University and Legal Aid Visting Scholar, to investigate and analyze data related to debt-related suspensions. The resulting report, “Road to Nowhere: Debt Related Driver’s License Suspensions in Ohio” played a key role in the statewide advocacy to eliminate debt-related suspensions. (Read the full report here: lasclev.org/roadtonowherereport)
Among other findings, the report revealed that debt-related suspensions cost residents of Ohio’s highest poverty zip codes an average of $7.9 million annually; and that such suspensions cost residents of Ohio zip codes with the highest percentages of people of color an average of $12 million each year.
“We first worked on data just for Northeast Ohio to see what the data looked like and how prevalent the problem was. Then we did a public records request for the whole state, five years’ worth of data,” Brian said. This included getting information for all of Ohio’s 1,200 zip codes to determine where suspensions were occurring, the types of suspensions, and how they correlated with population characteristics with a focus on poverty and race.
Zip codes that had the highest proportions of non-white populations had suspensions 130 times higher than the zip codes that had the whitest populations.
“Even though there were millions of debt-related suspensions throughout the state, they were not evenly distributed. Not everyone was feeling the impact in the same way,” Brian said.
Legal Aid’s “Road to Nowhere” report educated partners, the media, and lawmakers. Legal Aid worked with the Ohio Poverty Law Center, a group that led a large and diverse coalition of advocates and impacted Ohioans, to support the legislation over the last two years. Throughout the Senate and House committee process, nearly 40 witnesses ranging from legal aid societies to employment advocates to business leaders to conservative and taxpayer groups submitted proponent testimony.
When Governor DeWine signed the legislation, Ohio became the 25th state to move away from debt-related penalties.
Originally published in Legal Aid's "Poetic Justice" newsletter, Volume 22, Issue 1 in Spring 2025. See full issue at this link: “Poetic Justice” Volume 22, Issue 1 – Legal Aid Society of Cleveland