What it means for you
Virginia stopped suspending driver's licenses solely over unpaid court fines or costs on July 1, 2019. A 2020 law made that change permanent and preserved the waiver of related reinstatement fees.
Who benefits: Virginians who owe court fines or costs and rely on driving to get to work, school, or appointments.
If you owe fines or court costs in Virginia, the state can no longer take away your driver’s license for that reason alone. The old law required an automatic suspension when someone convicted of an offense didn’t pay right away.
A state budget provision first stopped those suspensions on July 1, 2019. It also removed existing suspensions for unpaid Virginia court fines and costs from DMV records and waived the related reinstatement fees. You still owe the underlying court debt, and suspensions imposed for other reasons remain in place.
The 2020 law made the change permanent by repealing the suspension requirement. It also required DMV to return or reinstate licenses that had been suspended before July 1, 2019, solely for unpaid fines or costs, without charging a reinstatement fee.
Sen. Bill Stanley, a Republican, led the effort. His 2019 bill passed the Senate but died in a House subcommittee, so Gov. Ralph Northam (D) added the change to the state budget, with money to make up for the lost fee revenue. In 2020, Stanley and Del. Alfonso Lopez, a Democrat, carried identical bills to make it permanent; Sen. Jennifer McClellan, a Democrat, was a chief co-patron of Stanley’s bill. In the House of Delegates, 20 Republicans joined every Democrat to pass SB 1 75–25. In the Senate, 18 of 19 Republicans voted yes on the final vote, which passed 38–1. Northam signed it on April 9, 2020.
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Sources
- SB 1, 2020 Session: bill history and summaryVirginia Legislative Information System
- Code of Virginia § 46.2-395 (repealed)Virginia Legislative Information System
- Item 3-6.03: Driver's License Reinstatement FeeVirginia Legislative Information System
- End License Suspensions for Unpaid Court Fines and CostsVirginia Department of Motor Vehicles
- HB 1196, 2020 Session: bill historyVirginia Legislative Information System
- SB 1013, 2019 Session: bill historyVirginia Legislative Information System
- Northam budget amendment would end driver's license suspension over unpaid feesWTVR CBS 6, March 26, 2019
- Victory: Virginia Ends Debt-Based Driver's License SuspensionsFines and Fees Justice Center, April 13, 2020
How we checked this
Drafted by Claude Opus 5.5 (Anthropic) on November 11, 2026. Checked against its sources by GPT-5.6-sol (OpenAI) on November 11, 2026, which corrected it. Confirmed the enacted chapters, benefit, funding, roll calls, and current status. Added an omitted chief co-patron and updated the status check to November 11, 2026.
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