Court Opinion

ID: 9628043
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 09:05:32.219138+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:06:56.377518
License: Public Domain

MOSK, J.
I dissent.
It is impossible to explain to a bus driver, a taxi driver, a truck driver, a sales representative, a driver of an ambulance or a fire engine, a public utility repairman, an electrician or a plumber, a physician on hospital call, the driver of an employees’ carpool, or a mother fulfilling her responsibility to deliver hers and her neighbors’ children to school that their absolute dependence upon operating a motor vehicle is not a fundamental right. Indeed the plaintiff Hernandez is a bus driver; thus the deprivation of his driver’s license directly and adversely affects his very livelihood and his ability to survive economically.
The majority pay lip service to automobile travel as “an important aspect of life in contemporary California society” and concede the authorities are “fully cognizant of the practical importance of an individual’s ‘right to drive’.” But then they proceed to accord that significant element of contemporary life the barest minimum of constitutional protection.
The result is contrary to the views this court expressed in Bixby v. Pierno (1971) 4 Cal.3d 130, 144 [93 Cal.Rptr. 234, 481 P.2d 242], and repeated in Strumsky v. San Diego County Employees Retirement Assn. (1974) 11 Cal.3d 28, 34 [112 Cal.Rptr. 805, 520 P.2d 29]: “[w]hen an administrative decision affects a right which has been legitimately acquired or is otherwise ‘vested,’ and when that right is of a fundamental nature from the standpoint of its economic aspect or its ‘effect... in human terms and the importance... to the individual in the life situation,’ then a full and independent judicial review of that decision is indicated because ‘[t]he abrogation of the right is too important to the individual to relegate it to exclusive administrative extinction.’” (Italics in original.)
The Court of Appeal in McConville v. Alexis (1979) 97 Cal.App.3d 593, 600 [159 Cal.Rptr. 49], arrived at what I believe to be the appropriate analysis: “As we see it, there can be little question but that possession of a driver’s license rises to the level of a fundamental right under Bixby in terms of both the economic implications relating thereto and ‘the importance of the possession ‘to the individual in the life situa*87tion.’ (Bixby v. Pierno, supra, 4 Cal.3d 130, 144.) This, of course, is most obviously true with respect to those individuals whose occupations depend directly on the ability to drive, such as truckdrivers or delivery persons. But even for those for whom driving is merely a way to get to and from a place such as work or school, the loss of a driver’s license for a six-month period can constitute a severe hardship.”
The United States Supreme Court reached a similar conclusion in Bell v. Burson (1971) 402 U.S. 535, 539 [29 L.Ed.2d 90, 94, 91 S.Ct. 1586]: “[o]nce [driver’s] licenses are issued. ..their continued possession may become essential in the pursuit of a livelihood. Suspension of issued licenses thus involves state action that adjudicates important interests of the licensees.”
I am not prepared to declare that the instant statute fails to meet the strict scrutiny test. I merely conclude that the majority err in not measuring the section by that test. It is, of course, considerably more exacting than the simplistic methods employed in the prevailing opinion.
Bird, C. J., concurred.
Appellant’s petition for a rehearing was denied November 19, 1981. Mosk, J., was of the opinion that the petition should be granted.