Tag: driver’s license suspension

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UPDATE: Northam calls for end of automatic driver’s license suspensions

Governor Ralph Northam was at Legal Aid Justice Center to call for an end to suspending driver’s licenses without consideration of ability to pay. Courtesy Legal Aid Justice Center

Governor Ralph Northam was in Charlottesville today to announce a budget amendment that would end the automatic suspension of driver’s licenses for nonpayment of court fines and costs. The amendment would also reinstate driving privileges for 627,000 Virginians whose licenses are suspended.

At Legal Aid Justice Center, which has filed suit against the commissioner of the Department of Motor Vehicles for the automatic suspensions that don’t consider someone’s ability to pay, Northam said, “It is time that we end this unjust practice and allow hardworking Virginians to get back to work”

A bill to end the practice failed in this year’s General Assembly, and one concern of legislators was that part of at $145 license reinstatement fee goes to the DMV and the Trauma Center. Northam said he’s providing $9 million in his budget amendment to cover the impact of the loss of the fee revenue.

Brianna Morgan, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, described losing her license over a minor traffic infraction during a high-risk pregnancy when she had no money. She was unable to take her father, who’d had a stroke, to doctor’s appointments. When her son had an asthma attack at school, it took an hour on the bus to get there. “Suspending people’s driver’s licenses for court debt they can’t pay hurts families,” she said. “It hurt mine.”

Plaintiff Brianna Morgan, center, with Delegate Cliff Hayes, Legal Aid Justice Center executive director Angela Ciolfi, Senator Jennifer McClellan, and Legal Aid policy coordinator Amy Woolard following the governor’s announcement that he wants to end automatic driver’s license suspensions. Legal Aid Justice Center

“The practice of suspending a person’s driver’s license for nonpayment of court fines and costs is inequitable—it’s past time we end it,” said Northam. “A driver’s license is critical to daily life, including a person’s ability to maintain a job. Eliminating a process that envelops hundreds of thousands of Virginians in a counterproductive cycle is not only fair, it’s also the right thing to do.”

Northam’s amendment goes back before the legislature when it reconvenes April 3.

The lawsuit, Stinnie v. Holcomb, was back in U.S. District Court March 25  after a big victory before Christmas. That’s when federal Judge Norman Moon issued a preliminary injunction reinstating the plaintiffs’ licenses, and said they were likely to prevail in their arguments the “license suspension scheme” is unconstitutional.

In the latest hearing, the state argued a motion to dismiss, still insisting driving is not a fundamental right, and that a traffic summons and a form given in court offered people plenty of notice that their license would be suspended 30 days after their conviction if they didn’t pay up—and if they read the form, they’d know they could request a payment plan, community service, or just ask the judge to forego the fine and court costs all together.

“What if a person 15 days later runs into a government shutdown and doesn’t get a check?” asked Moon. “What tells them they’re entitled to a hearing?”

“There is no notice before the automatic suspension,” said McGuireWoods attorney Jonathan Blank, who, with Legal Aid Justice Center, represents the plaintiffs.

He said the automatic suspension of driver’s licenses is a coercive way to collect debt, a technique private creditors can’t use. “It’s crazy and it’s not constitutional,” said Blank. “People are threatened with jail if they can’t pay their debts.”

He also called the state law “one of the worst statutes that’s in the Code of Virginia today.”

The plaintiffs filed a motion to certify a class action that would include everyone whose license is currently suspended and all future suspensions.

The commonwealth disagreed, and said the class was way over broad and would include people who could afford to pay.

“Every individual deserves the right to notice [of license suspension] regardless of their ability to pay,” said McGuireWoods attorney Laura Lange.

Judge Moon did not rule on either motion, and a weeklong trial is scheduled to begin August 5.

Legal Aid Justice Center executive director Angela Ciolfi says she can’t predict when or how the judge will rule, but “relief can’t come soon enough for the hundreds of thousands of families living under this brutally unconstitutional law.”

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Punishing: Repeal of automatic driver’s license suspensions dies in subcommittee

Delegate Rob Bell was on the subcommittee that killed a repeal of automatic driver’s license suspensions.  AMY JACKSON SMITH

Things were looking good for opponents of Virginia’s automatic suspension of driver’s licenses for nonpayment of court costs. A federal judge had opined the state law is likely unconstitutional, a Republican state senator carried a bill that repealed the law, and it passed the Senate 36-4.

Then it got to a House subcommittee, where four Republicans, including Delegate Rob Bell, torpedoed the measure 4-3.

Senator Bill Stanley, a criminal defense attorney who represents a chunk of Southside, was not pleased, particularly with Bell and House Majority Leader Todd Gilbert and their grip on the Courts of Justice subcommittee.

He told the Roanoke Times February 11, “They just want to continue to punish people, they just want to continue to punish the poor, they just want to continue to put their will forth as the will of the commonwealth, two people determining the fate of 600,000 Virginians. This is rule by fiat.”

Stanley, who carried the same bill last year, figured it had a better chance this year, particularly after Judge Norman Moon issued a preliminary injunction in Stinnie v. DMV ordering the reinstatement of the plaintiffs’ licenses, which had been automatically suspended when they couldn’t afford to pay the fines and court costs, which thrust them into spiraling debt and, in some cases, jail for driving on suspended licenses.

Legislators who didn’t support the measure last year told Stanley they would vote for it this year, he says. “When Judge Moon made his decision, I thought we’re either going to fix this problem of debtors prison or a federal judge will,” says Stanley. “It looks like the judge will.”

He calls the automatic suspensions “punitive,” and the $145 DMV reinstatement fee a tax. “This has nothing to do with bad driving,” he says.

Bell “respectfully disagrees” with Stanley. For serious offenses like passing a school bus or texting while driving, “when someone violates those, I do think it’s appropriate they be punished and they pay some penalty,” he says.

The General Assembly passed a law in 2017 that requires courts to offer payment plans or community service. “As long as you’re on the payment plan, you have your license and you can drive,” says Bell. “We do require you to have some punishment.”

“You miss one payment and your license is suspended,” retorts Stanley. And those plans are used “exclusively for those who are in front of the court. It does nothing for the 600,000 who have already had their licenses suspended.”

Stanley says the automatic license suspensions punish people for being poor, and makes it difficult for them to get to jobs and provide for their families. “It perpetuates poverty,” he says. “I don’t think you can have economic growth without removing the crushing cycle of poverty.”

He adds, “You’d think Republicans would want to get people off dependency.”

Angela Ciolfi, executive director of the Legal Aid Justice Center, represents the plaintiffs in the federal case. She says her team did an analysis of the results of the payment plan legislation and found that the new policy made almost no difference in the number of licenses suspended.

“And the suspension law hasn’t changed, either,” she says. “When someone doesn’t pay or falls off a payment plan, the law says that suspension is automatic, with no notice, no hearing, and no consideration of why the person didn’t pay.”

She’s working on making the case a class action suit, and anticipates the parties will be back in court soon.

Stanley believes that if Judge Moon orders the DMV to reinstate all the licenses suspended for nonpayment of fines, “it will create havoc in the DMV” that could be avoided if legislators fixed the problem.

And he’s still not happy that a subcommittee killed a bill he thought had broad bipartisan support in the General Assembly. “The rule of a few is determining the future of 600,000 people.”

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In brief: Frat reprimand, Northam’s numbers, SNL target and more

Kirsten Hemrich

Bad choices

  • Photos appeared February 3 of Kappa Sigma fraternity members wearing American Indian headdresses (pictured above), and a since-deleted social media post captured Zeta Tau Alpha sorority sisters in sombreros and carrying maracas. UVA’s Inter-Fraternity Council condemned Kappa Sig’s “cultural appropriation” as being “prejudiced and culturally insensitive.”
  • Governor Ralph Northam, in his first televised interview in over a week, told CBS’s Gayle King that it’s the 400th anniversary of “the first indentured servants from Africa” arriving in Virginia.
  • The Bomb, Virginia Military Institute’s yearbook, included blackface photos while state Senate Majority Leader Tommy Norment was managing editor in the 1960s. Norment says he was one of seven working on the yearbook and “cannot endorse or associate myself with every photo, entry, or word on each page.” He adds that he is not in any of the photos, nor did he take them.
  • The University of Richmond joins in the racist imagery with a photo from its 1980 yearbook of a man with a noose around his neck surrounded by people in KKK garb.
  • And VCU’s yearbook included blackface photos as recently as 1989, WTKR reports.
  • Attorney General Mark Herring admitted February 6 that he applied brown makeup and a wig to go to a party dressed as rapper Kurtis Blow in 1980 while he was a 19-year-old UVA student.

Quote of the week

“What if the blackface was just part of your costume of a black person?”—“Saturday Night Live” skewers Virginia and white cluelessness

 

In brief

Drop the cellphone

Both houses of the General Assembly passed bans on the use of handheld communication devices while driving. The measure to thwart distracted driving is expected to be signed into law, and Virginia will join neighboring Maryland and the District of Columbia in prohibiting holding a cellphone while on the road.

License reform killed

A Senate bill to repeal Virginia’s automatic suspension of driver’s licenses for nonpayment of fines, which has been called a “modern-day debtors prison,” died in a House subcommittee February 11, with Delegate Rob Bell one of the 4-3 votes to not let the legislation move forward. A federal judge has said the current law is likely unconstitutional.

Speaking of Bell

Greene County Democrat Elizabeth Alcorn, a retired dentist and former county party chair who resigned after a dispute with Leslie Cockburn’s 5th District campaign last year, says she’ll challenge Bell for this 58th District seat. Bell will seek his 10th term in November.

Northam’s numbers

Virginians are pretty evenly split about whether Governor Ralph Northam should resign after a photo depicting people in blackface and in KKK garb appeared on his 1984 yearbook page, according to a Washington Post/Schar School poll. Overall, 47 percent say he should resign and 47 percent feel he should stay. Among African Americans, 58 percent think Northam should remain in office and 37 percent want him to go.

Blackface numbers

In the same poll, 11 percent of the Virginians surveyed have either worn blackface or know someone who has.

 

Candidate conundrum

Charlottesville police sent an officer to Commonwealth’s Attorney Joe Platania’s office February 7 for a reported disturbance in which City Council candidate John Hall was being “verbally aggressive.” Hall wasn’t there when the cop arrived, and no charges have been filed.

UConn/UVA pipeline

courtesy UVA

Executive VP and Provost Thomas C. Katsouleas has been named the next president of the University of Connecticut. Former UVA prez John Casteen served as UConn president from 1985 to 1990 before taking the top spot here.

School absences surge during flu season

Thirty-three fewer students and staff were present at Venable Elementary School on February 11, and they have the flu to blame.

Charlottesville schools spokesperson Krissy Vick, who’s been “washing her hands like crazy,” says a letter went home to parents to acknowledge the illness, which also kept 14 people home from Greenbrier and 13 from Walker Upper Elementary on February 8. 

It’s no surprise that county schools have been hit, too.

“It’s been a challenging time,” says spokesperson Phil Giaramita. More than half of the 25 schools in Albemarle have had “significantly higher absence rates due to illness,” and though he couldn’t give any specifics because they don’t log every absence, he says, “it’s a reasonable assumption that flu has been a major contributor.”

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Prosecutors pump the brakes on suspended license cases

A lawsuit to help prevent those unable to pay court fines from spiraling into further debt and prosecution got a significant boost last week.

Charlottesville Commonwealth’s Attorney Joe Platania announced January 4 that he will no longer prosecute people charged with driving on a license that was suspended solely for failure to pay court costs or fines.

Platania’s announcement comes on the heels of a December 21 preliminary injunction by a federal judge in Charlottesville, which ordered Department of Motor Vehicles Commissioner Richard Holcomb to reinstate the driver’s licenses of three plaintiffs who automatically lost their licenses when they were unable to pay court costs and fines. Judge Norman Moon predicted attorneys will win the case, and said such automatic suspensions are unconstitutional.

Platania said the injunction raises “significant concerns” about prosecuting people who have had their licenses suspended in that way. He will continue to prosecute other suspensions for DUIs or restitutions, he says.

“I think Joe did the right thing and I’m really proud he did it,” says Liz Murtagh, head of the public defender’s office. “It’ll make a big difference for people,” she adds, particularly her clients, who often can’t afford to pay their fines as they’re leaving the courtroom, starting a “vicious, vicious” cycle.

Albemarle County Commonwealth’s Attorney Robert Tracci says his office put a halt to prosecuting the cases because of the injunction. The cases have been continued in general district court until the constitutional issues have been resolved or the injunction is lifted.

Before Tracci confirmed that his office was not prosecuting those cases, local immigration attorney Tanishka Cruz predicted it wouldn’t happen in the county “as long as Robert Tracci is the commonwealth’s attorney.”

She says Tracci’s office has historically taken a “one size fits all” approach and has sent many of her clients to jail for such an offense.

Says Tracci, “Commonwealth’s attorneys have no more discretion to ignore a federal injunction than to ignore federal immigration laws.”

Attorneys with the Legal Aid Justice Center are representing the three plaintiffs in the federal lawsuit against the DMV.

“We are very hopeful that between the judicial ruling and the bipartisan momentum for repeal, the time has come to end this destructive practice,” says Legal Aid Executive Director Angela Ciolfi. “Meanwhile, the ruling casts doubt on the constitutionality of all suspensions flowing from the statute, and it makes sense for law enforcement to press pause on enforcement.”

Updated January 9 at 12:12pm to clarify that Robert Tracci stopped prosecuting these cases when the injunction was issued.

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In brief: DMV’s court order, Brown’s abrupt closing, Murray’s lump of coal and more

Courtesy DMV

Driver’s license suspensions under siege

A federal judge granted a preliminary injunction December 21 and ordered Department of Motor Vehicles Commissioner Richard Holcomb to reinstate the driver’s licenses of three plaintiffs who automatically lost their licenses when they were unable to pay court costs and fines. The judge said they are likely to prevail in their arguments that such automatic suspensions are unconstitutional.

That same week, Governor Ralph Northam called for an end to the practice. And Republican state Senator Bill Stanley has filed a bill that would end the automatic suspensions.

The class-action lawsuit—Stinnie v. Holcomb—challenges the automatic loss of driving privileges regardless of a person’s ability to pay and without notice or a hearing. Brought by the Legal Aid Justice Center in Charlottesville, the case alleges that approximately 650,000 Virginians have had their licenses suspended for reasons that have nothing to do with driving violations and solely for failure to pay fines.

In his ruling, Judge Norman Moon says, “While the Court recognizes the Commonwealth’s interest in ensuring the collection of court fines and costs, these interests are not furthered by a license suspension scheme that neither considers an individual’s ability to pay nor provides him with an opportunity to be heard on the matter.”

Two of the plaintiffs—Damian Stinnie and Adrianne Johnson—are from Charlottesville, and Moon’s injunction noted how the inability to drive affected their ability to find employment and “created a cycle of debt.”

His ruling only affects the plaintiffs in the case, and the DMV is ordered to reinstate their licenses without charging its $145 reinstatement fee.

“Today’s ruling is a victory for the Constitution and for common sense. The Court stated unequivocally that Virginia’s driver’s license suspension statute likely violates procedural due process rights, says Angela Ciolfi, executive director of Legal Aid Justice Center, in a release.

Since the case was filed in 2016, the issue, which advocates call a “modern-day debtors prison,” has gained national attention. Lawsuits have been filed in six other states and a federal judge in Tennessee recently issued a similar injunction there.

Quote of the week

“We cannot ignore the role of firearms in mass school shootings, nor should we avoid our responsibility as legislators to act.”—Democratic minority report to a House of Delegates committee report on school safety that does not address gun violence

In brief

Eugenics landmark closes

The Central Virginia Training Center outside Lynchburg, where 4,000 Virginians were sterilized, often without their knowledge, will close in 2020. Charlottesvillian Carrie Buck was sent there in 1924, because she was pregnant and accused of promiscuity and “feeble-mindedness.” In Buck v. Bell, the U.S. Supreme Court famously ruled that “three generations of imbeciles are enough,” and okayed her later sterilization. The institution stopped performing sterilizations in 1952 but continued to care for the intellectually disabled.

Hung out to dry

Brown’s Cleaners abruptly shuttered its four stores Christmas Eve, leaving employees without paychecks—and customers wondering how to retrieve their dry cleaning. A sign said to check legal notices in the Daily Progress about how to pick up orders, but as of December 28, the Progress said it had received no info from the 71-year-old business, which took its website down and left phones unanswered. NBC29 reports the company declared bankruptcy.

Virginians favor pot decriminalization

A new ACLU poll shows 71 percent of registered voters favor dropping criminal penalties for small amounts of marijuana, and 63 percent say it should be legal and regulated like alcohol. The poll also shows a majority believe that race or economic status influence how one is treated in the criminal justice system, and 62 percent say fewer people should be sent to prison because it costs taxpayers too darn much.

Garrett’s swan song

Tom Garrett file photo

In his last days as 5th District representative, Tom Garrett saw President Donald Trump sign his bill renaming the Barracks Road Shopping Center post office in honor of Captain Humayun Khan, a UVA grad who died in Iraq in 2004. The Republican also delivered a bipartisan letter to Trump opposing the president’s decision to remove U.S. troops from Syria, calling it a threat to national security.

Lump o’ coal

Jim Murray contributed photo

The office of UVA Vice Rector Jim Murray got a visit from one of “Santa’s elves,” who delivered a piece of coal and said the venture capitalist had been naughty this year for opposing a living wage and calling its proponents “intellectually lazy,” according to a video circulated by Virginia Organizing.

Another Landes challenger

Ivy resident Lauren Thompson, 30, became the second Democrat to seek the nomination to run against 12-termer Republican Delegate Steve Landes, 59, whose 25th District, mainly in Augusta and Rockingham counties, includes a swipe of western Albemarle. Thompson, a Navy veteran, faces Augusta activist Jenni Kitchen, 37, for the Dem nod.

By the numbers

Housing affordability

The folks at the Virginia Public Access Project are always crunching the numbers, and last week they published how much of your take-home pay goes to housing, depending on where you live.

While Charlottesville may seem like one of the most expensive markets in the state, in Emporia City, 32.7 percent of median household income goes for housing, compared to nearly 25 percent in Charlottesville and 20.14 percent in Albemarle County. Highland County is the cheapest place to live, taking only an 11.6 percent bite out of paychecks, according to VPAP.

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‘Modern-day debtors’ prison’: Injunction sought to stop practice of suspending driver’s licenses for unpaid fines

Caption Legal Aid Justice Center attorney Angela Ciolfi wants a judge to order the DMV to stop automatically suspending driver’s licenses because of unpaid fines and court costs. Staff photo

It’s a tough argument to make: That a woman with three children who makes around $9 an hour, who can’t buy enough groceries to meet minimum nutritional needs, and who shares a bedroom with two kids in an apartment with another family, has plenty of money left over to pay $100 a month to get her suspended driver’s license back.

Yet that was the case the Commonwealth of Virginia made at a November 15 hearing. The state suggested that if the woman gave up her cellphone, she’d have the $100 a month and that losing access to communication would in no way would cause her “irreparable harm.”

The case is Stinnie v. Holcomb, and it was filed in 2016 by the Legal Aid Justice Center, which claims the state’s automatic suspension of driver’s licenses for nonpayment of court fines and fees that often have nothing to do with actual driving infractions, is unconstitutional because it happens with no notice of the suspension, no consideration of the person’s ability to pay, and falls disproportionately upon the poor.

At a four-and-a-half-hour hearing in U.S. District Court, plaintiffs’ attorneys asked Judge Norman Moon for a preliminary injunction to immediately stop the automatic suspensions.

Moon has seen this case before. In early 2017, he heard the state’s motion to dismiss, which argued that Richard Holcomb, the DMV commissioner, was not the proper defendant and federal court not the proper venue. Moon agreed and dismissed the case, but a federal appeals court sent it back to him.

This time, Moon asked a lot more questions about how indigent people were supposed to pay staggering court costs—and then the additional $145 the DMV charges to reinstate a license. At times he called a driver’s license a “property right,” veering from the state’s assertion that a license is a privilege.

“We’re seeking an order declaring the statute unconstitutional,” said Legal Aid Justice Center attorney Angela Ciolfi. That’s a possibility Moon had considered last year in his decision dismissing the case, because people get no notice or hearing about the license suspension—in effect no due process.

Adrianne Johnson, 34, is one of the plaintiffs. The native Charlottesvillian has three children and worked as a certified nursing assistant until she was convicted of a drug charge in Brunswick County. She didn’t get jail time, but had court costs of $865. She was paying $100 a month until she lost her job. Unaware that her license had been suspended for the unpaid fines, she was then charged with driving with a suspended license. After a second suspension, she stopped driving because a third conviction carries jail time.

Not having a license has affected her job opportunities, she testified. Though she managed to find another job, the lack of a driver’s license is preventing her from being promoted to manager, she said, because that position requires driving to make daily bank deposits.

“It’s very stressful, very inconvenient to me and my children,” she said. Her daughter has medical issues and her son plays sports. “I can’t take him or go to any of his games.”

With a license, she said, “I would be able to have a better paying job. I could pay the court costs and fines.”

Assistant Attorney General Margaret O’Shea asked Johnson if she’d gone to the Brunswick court to ask for community service.

“No, I didn’t know about that,” said Johnson. “And how am I going to get to Brunswick? I don’t have a license.”

O’Shea suggested that with Johnson’s $200/month rent for a room she shares with two of her children, she should have plenty of money left over to pay her fines.

“I have nothing left over after I pay my expenses,” said Johnson. “It just leaves me with nothing. Nothing at all.”

The plaintiffs called Diana Pearce, a University of Washington professor who created the self-sufficiency standard, which determines that amount of income needed to meet basic needs.

Pearce looked at Johnson’s income and expenses, and said, “She’s not able to meet her basic needs based on her income.”

O’Shea asked if the numbers meant Johnson had $400 a month left over, and that with the $200 rent, “she had a roof over her head.”

The money is not extra income, maintained Pearce. Johnson is “not spending enough on housing and nutritional needs,” and sharing a room with two kids was not meeting basic needs, she added.

Steven Peterson is a microeconomist who testified that the loss of a driver’s license for unpaid fines “disproportionately affected poor people,” with 40 to 45 percent losing their jobs. If they found another job, he said, 88 percent had lower incomes.

Using numbers from the DMV, he said in 2017, 977,891 people had their licenses suspended, and 647,517 of those were suspended only as a result of not paying fines and court costs.

McGuireWoods attorney Jonathan Blank asked the judge to declare the suspensions unconstitutional. “You cannot punish a person who lacks the resources to pay a debt,” he said. “We’re here because this is a modern-day debtors prison.”

Moon seemed skeptical of the commonwealth’s arguments that the costs on indigent people caused no “irreparable harm,” and said, “They shouldn’t be punished if they cannot pay.”

But with an eye toward the weather, Moon recessed the court without ruling and said he had to get to Lynchburg.

“I feel very heartened by the judge’s questions,” said Ciolfi. “He clearly gets the unfairness” and the “devastation” to people’s lives.

 

 

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In brief: 5th District frenzy, license lawsuit lives, copycat charged and more

Flanna and Tom Garrett were accused of making congressional staffers handle personal chores. Staff photo

Garrett’s abrupt change of heart

Congressman Tom Garrett has many critics in the Charlottesville area who call him “One-term Tom,” but even they didn’t foresee that happening by Garrett withdrawing from the 5th District race.

Word that Garrett may not seek re-election first was reported by Politico May 23 after he and his chief of staff parted ways. The next day, Garrett held a Facebook Live news conference and insisted he was still in the race, although UVA Center for Politics pundit Larry Sabato described the event as “strange,” the Daily Progress reports.

On May 24, four former staffers told Politico that Garrett and his wife, Flanna, forced them to run personal errands, including picking up groceries and dog poop.

By May 28, a teary Garrett appeared in Richmond at Capitol Square, where he’d served a term in the General Assembly, and said, “Any person—Republican, Democrat or independent—who has known me for any period of time and has any integrity knows two things: I am a good man and I’m an alcoholic,” according to the Washington Post.

The withdrawal could leave the Republican Party of Virginia with a flood of candidates vying to face Democratic nominee Leslie Cockburn. Distillery owner Denver Riggleman, who ran for governor last year, says he’s seeking the nomination, as are Delegate Michael Webert, a Fauquier resident, Martha Boneta, a Fauquier farmer, and Jim McKelvey, a Bedford developer who sought the 5th District seat twice before. Delegate Rob Bell is one of the names floated, but he says he’s not going to run.

“That’s why it’s a no-drugs, no-thugs scene here.”—Adharsh McCabe, the former Boylan Heights general manager, in a May 25 Daily Progress article on his policy to bar all but UVA students after 11 pm. Boylan Heights then released a statement that McCabe’s policy was never approved, and fired him.

Cops not liable

A federal judge threw out local resident Robert Sanchez Turner’s lawsuit against the city, the state and city and state police officers, for failing to uphold the 14th Amendment on August 12 by “interven[ing] and protect[ing] a citizen from criminal conduct by third parties.” Judge Norman Moon said there is no clearly established constitutional right to support any of the Unite the Right counterprotester’s claims.

Lawsuit stays alive

The Legal Aid Justice Center filed a federal class-action lawsuit in 2016 on behalf of Charlottesville resident Damian Stinnie, 24, who was unable to pay about $1,000 in traffic fines, and lost his driver’s license. It’s the legal group’s position that Virginia’s suspension of licenses for nonpayment of court fees is an “unconstitutional scheme.”  A district court dismissed the suit last year, but on May 23, an appeals court overruled the dismissal.

Federal charges

Michael Anthony Townes, the Atlanta man who posted threatening messages online against Charlottesville schools and caused all city schools to go into lockdown for two days last October, has been arrested and is facing federal charges. He claimed he would “pull off a copycat” of the mass shooting in Las Vegas at an “all-white charter school” in Charlottesville.

Integration leader

Civic activist Helen “Sandy” Snook, who was one of the first to integrate a children’s camp and Girl Scout troop in Central Virginia in the 1960s and who was active in the League of Women Voters and many civic organizations, died May 22 at age 90.

 

 

 

 

 

Merger alert

WVPT PBS and WHTJ PBS have merged, and according to “Charlottesville Inside-Out” co-producer and host Terri Allard, this means new PBS programming and PBS Kids summer learning opportunities.

Suicide

Andrew Dodson, 34, an alt-righter from South Carolina who attended the August 12 Unite the Right rally, killed himself in March. As the news circulated on the web last week, white supremacist leader Richard Spencer attributed Dodson’s suicide to being doxxed, and called doxxing an “act of war,” according to anti-fascist blog It’s Going Down.

The SMART way to handle a gun

Need a cable gun lock? Drop by the Albemarle County Police Department during normal business hours to snag a free one. To use it, put the firearm’s safety on, pass the cable through the barrel, into the chamber and through the magazine. Then lock it with the padlock.

On the heels of two 2-year-old children who were accidentally shot to death in Virginia on the same day last week—one by his 4-year-old brother in Louisa and the other in Roanoke, when a toddler found a loaded gun in his parents’ apartment—one area group is working to make the country safer for children.

“I am always perplexed by the accidental part,” says Priya Mahadevan, the head of the local chapter of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America. “Responsible gun owners do not leave a loaded weapon within reach of their babies. Now a 4-year-old toddler has been saddled with the fate of having killed his sibling.”

On May 23, the group of determined moms and allies held a Wear Orange bingo fundraiser at Random Row Brewery, where dozens of people showed up dressed in the favorite color of Hadiya Pendleton, the 15-year-old girl who was shot and killed in Chicago in 2013. The Wear Orange campaign has been embraced by activist groups across the nation.

Over the past 20 years, tens of thousands of people have suffered gun-related deaths, according to Mahadevan.

Says the mother who was born in India, “I have three beautiful children, but they have grown up in this awful, fearful, trigger-happy nation and I feel so bad that I cannot give them the simplicity of the life I had in a country where I had never seen a gun. They were very much present there as well, but it was never a threat to safety of civilians.”

Mahadevan’s group offers a list of tips to help gun owners be “SMART” when it comes to their firearms. “We have so many other things to worry about already, this should not be one of them,” she says.

Secure guns in homes and vehicles

Model responsible behavior

Ask about unsecured guns in other homes

Recognize the risks of teen suicide

Tell your peers to be SMART

 

Correction June 4: The date of Tom Garrett’s announcement that he would not seek reelection‚May 28—was wrong in the original version.