Court Opinion

ID: 9862774
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-25 02:08:15.821667+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T11:32:15.334343
License: Public Domain

*177Justice HECHT,
joined by Justice OWEN, concurring in the judgment.
The amount of the fee that the government charges for a particular license rarely has anything at all to do with the value of the license to the licensee or the amount the licensee would be willing to pay for the privilege conveyed.1 This is certainly true for a driver’s license, which costs $242 and is good for at least six years.3 Surely the right to drive a car — and beyond doubt the right to drive a pickup — in Texas is worth much more than eight cents a week. (It is worth noting that a Department employee was recently charged with selling driver’s licenses illegally for $300-$775 apiece,4 which is perhaps some indication of what a “market price” would be.) A license to operate a motorcycle or moped costs $32.5 Is that because the right to drive a motorcycle or moped is worth a third more than the right to drive a car or pickup? Of course not! Does a driver’s license worth only $24 before it is suspended suddenly become worth $124 after the driver pays $100 to reinstate it?6 No. If any explanation for the amount of a driver’s license fee exists, and it may well be that the charge is more or less arbitrary, it certainly relates more to the administrative costs of processing applications, giving examinations, and issuing licenses than it does to the value of the license to a driver. The Court in its search for a dollar figure written down somewhere to satisfy the court of appeals’ $100 jurisdictional minimum ignores the plain fact that the value of a driver’s license and the value of the State’s interest in curbing drunk driving— both of which are involved in this appeal— are worth considerably more than $100. I agree that the court of appeals should not have dismissed the appeal for want of jurisdiction.

. Tune v. Texas Dept. of Pub. Safety, 23 S.W.3d 358, 366 (Tex.2000) (Hecht, J., concurring).

. Tex Transp. Code § 521.271(a)(1), (b).

. Id. § 521.421(a).

. Worker Charged with Selling Licenses: Department of Public Safety Says Customers Paid Her Hundreds of Dollars, Dallas Morning News, March 26, 2001, at 24A.

. Tex. Transp. Code § 521.421(b), (f).

. Id. § 724.046(a).