Virginia’s abuser fees face a legal challenge in a Courtroom near Richmond today, but the likelihood that the challenge will ultimately succeed seems slim:
The constitutionality of Virginia’s abusive-drivers fees will be debated today in a General District Court outside Richmond, but don’t expect them to go away anytime soon.
Even if Judge Archer Yeatts finds the fees violate constitutional maxims of equal protection, they still might not disappear because state prosecutors will almost certainly file an appeal to the Virginia Supreme Court.
Kent Sinclair, a University of Virginia law professor, said the state’s high court usually takes at least a year to decide cases, but it could cut the wait in half if it heard arguments on an expedited schedule.
And, actually, the process could take longer than that. Any appeal of a General District Court decision first has to pass through Circuit Court before you can even apply to the Supreme Court for an appeal. Even then, there’s the possibility that the Supreme Court would not take the appeal, but that seems unlikely with an issue like this.
So, okay, it takes the appeal, what next ?
The General Assembly, which meets again in January, could change the law before the legal process finishes if a lower court rules against the fees. Motorists’ best hope for seeing the fees eliminated appears to be the legislature because Sinclair said state and federal courts give bodies such as Congress and the General Assembly wide latitude in writing laws.
“As long as there is a rational basis for what the General Assembly did, then the courts tend to leave the law alone even if it is something the court would not have done,” he said.
Which means that the best hope for change will have to wait until the 2007 election, and the new General Assembly session in January.
