Starting this July 1, 2007, the state of Virginia will be imposing new “Civil Remedial Fees" on drivers who get certain types of driving citations (tickets). Money generated from these fines will be used to pay for highway improvements throughout the state. And they're no ordinary fines, they're huge. These new 'fees' will be in addition to any fines that are currently charged. A speeding ticket could now easily cost you more than $3,000 in fines. The infractions, along with the fines are listed here.
Aside from the general shock of how steep the fines are, I was also amazed to learn that these fines will only apply to Virginia residents:
“The civil remedial fees established by this section shall be assessed on any resident of Virginia operating a motor vehicle on the highways of Virginia, including persons to whom Virginia driver's licenses, commercial driver's licenses, or learner's permits have been issued pursuant to this title; and persons operating motor vehicles without licenses or whose license has been revoked or suspended.”
So if you’re from another state and are caught speeding in Virginia, you’re immune to these fines. That just doesn't sound right with me, and I believe the Constitution of the United States bars this type of law being passed.
Article IV, Section 2 of the Constitution states that:
The citizens of each state shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several states.
If a citizen from Virginia has a privilege and immunity from some penalty within Virginia, then a citizen of North Carolina (while in the state of Virginia) has that same protection as well. The writers of the Constitution were most likely worried that a state like Virginia might pass laws that only applied to citizens of another state, like Maryland for example. Something like, “All drivers on the roads of Virginia must pay a highway use fee of $100 per day (*residents of Virginia are exempt).
Imagine the havoc it would create if each state started writing laws that only applied to citizens of other states. Commerce would break down as states retaliated against each other. We would be left with kingdom 'states', rather than a "united" states (the Constitution's authors probably never considered that a state might write laws that ‘stick it’ to only their own people, but that’s what Virginia is going to do).
That's why Article IV Section 2 of the Constitution says that if a citizen of Maryland is exempt from this fine/fee/penalty solely by virtue of the fact that they are a from the state of Maryland, then the state of Virginia has to afford me the same immunity/privilege.
Not content to violate just one part of the Constitution, Virgina has also decided to take on that pesky XIV Amendment. This amendment guarantees, in a nutshell, that no state shall "...deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Yet Virginia is planning to afford protection from this fine to the everyone but residents of Virginia. Imagine if the outcry if the phrase "Virginia resident" were replaced by any other description: "The civil remedial fees established by this section shall be assessed on any (person of African decent, woman, Puerto Rican, Californian, resident of Richmond, etc) operating a motor vehicle on the highways of Virginia..."
In fact, the Supreme Court has already ruled on a similar issue once before (Hicklin v. Orbeck (No. 77-324)). In this case, an Alaskan law required preferential hiring of Alaskans based on their state of residence. The law was struck down in part because the law violated the Privileges and Immunities Clause of Art. IV, § 2.
The mystery in all this is not that Virginia Legislators have no idea what the Constitution says. It's why they would not fine everyone. Why would they forgo all that extra money? What about fining other state's residents has them rattled? You can see from the initial versions of this bill that they intended to fine everyone, then suddenly it was Virginians only.
Could it be they foresaw a bigger problem, maybe a federal problem dealing with interstate commerce?
Update: The VA Code Section related to the fees is located here.
