A California state appeals panel says the state's Department of Motor Vehicles doesn't violate California privacy law by allowing employers, insurance companies and others to learn why someone's drivers license was suspended, even if they haven't been criminally convicted of driving under the influence or another offense.
On June 21, a three-justice panel of the California First District Appellate Court issued their ruling, largely overturning the decision of an Alameda County Superior Court judge who had ruled the DMV violated the right to privacy established under the California state constitution and the state's labor laws.
The decision was authored by Justice Mark B. Simons. Justices Gordon B. Burns and Danny Y. Chou concurred.
The case centered on a lawsuit brought in 2016 by a group of unidentified plaintiffs against the DMV.
The lawsuit asserts the DMV violated their privacy rights by disclosing reasons that their license had been suspended when receiving requests from employers and others participating in certain programs by which the DMV shares portions of people's so-called public driving record.
They argued the disclosures were improper because there had been no criminal conviction corresponding to the license suspension through the so-called "administrative per se" or APS suspension process. APS suspensions are typically administered under California state law after a driver is found to have been driving with a blood-alcohol concentration of 0.08 or above for those over 21 or 0.01 or more for those under 21 years old.
APS license suspensions can also be administered to drivers who refuse to submit to chemical testing when DUI is suspected.
If criminal DUI charges are brought and a person is acquitted, the APS suspension is set aside and nullified, according to court documents.
However, if criminal charges are not brought, a person whose license has been suspended through the APS process must go through an administrative hearing process to contest the suspension.
According to court documents, the DMV has routinely included such APS suspensions to employers, insurers and others requesting people's public driving records, even when such people have not been criminally convicted of DUI.
Such disclosures can disqualify people from obtaining or keeping jobs involving driving, such as rideshare drivers through services like Uber.
According to court document, some of the plaintiffs said the disclosures had ruined their chances of landing Uber driver positions or other positions, including a receptionist, manager at a trucking firm and insurance underwriter.
In Alameda County Superior Court, Judge Brad Seligman ruled for the plaintiffs, agreeing the disclosures violated their privacy rights.
On appeal, however, the First District court said Seligman's interpretation of the law was wrong.
Plaintiffs argued the APS suspensions are no different than disclosing someone has been arrested, which could be protected from disclosure.
But APS license suspensions are different, the justices said.
"... An arrest does not lead to an APS suspension unless and until the offense is established under a higher standard and, upon the licensee's request, the accusation is tested in an adversarial evidentiary hearing," Justice Simons wrote.
"The Legislature considered this procedure sufficiently reliable to decouple the administrative process from the criminal, allowing the administrative result to stand unless the criminal proceeding results in an acquittal. This decoupling supports a conclusion that prohibiting disclosure of the reason for an APS suspension would not serve the purposes underlying the constitutional and statutory privacy provisions."
However, in making their ruling, the justices said the plaintiffs were correct on other claims, that the DMV had violated their rights by holding that the state's Information Practices Act - which entitles Californians to seek timely corrections to their official records - doesn't apply to their license suspension decisions.
While DMV argued the IPA's inspection and correction provisions apply only to "personal information," the justices said the law should actually be read to give such inspection rights to "any record containing personal information."
"... The Legislature could reasonably determine that inspection rights should be limited to personal information, but that if a person learns of an error in a nonpersonal part of a record, that person should be entitled to request the error be corrected," Justice Simons wrote.
The justices upheld Judge Seligman's ruling on this point.
Plaintiffs are represented by attorneys Miguel Soto Jr., of the East Bay Community Law Center; and David R. Carpenter, Nicole M. Baade, Jaime A. Bartlett, Sara B. Brody and Matthew Henry, of the firm of Sidley Austin LLP.
The DMV has been represented by attorneys with the California Department of Justice and Attorney General Rob Bonta.