Nullify Insurance Law, Supreme Court Urged

In the short time it was enforced, California’s mandatory auto insurance law had a “disastrous effect” on low-income motorists and should be declared unconstitutional, the state Supreme Court was told Thursday.

An attorney for a group of Los Angeles residents challenging the 1985 law said 55,000 driver’s licenses were revoked in the three-month period before the justices blocked the law’s enforcement pending a ruling on its validity.

“A huge number of people were losing their licenses because they could not afford insurance coverage,” Armando M. Menocal III said in oral argument before the court in Los Angeles. “Once the state mandates that you must have insurance to keep your right to drive, the state has to guarantee some access to insurance.”

A lawyer for the state contended, however, that the fact that 55,000 people had been caught without insurance shows how widespread the problem of the uninsured motorist is in California and how badly the law is needed.

‘The Greater Harm’

“Clearly, the greater harm comes from not having a mandatory insurance law in force and having people driving around without insurance, causing accidents and being totally unable to respond to the damages they cause,” said state Deputy Atty. Gen. Christopher C. Foley.

The impact, he said, was particularly great on the poor, who can lose their cars or incur medical bills they cannot pay as the result of a collision with an uninsured motorist. The legislation was enacted in an attempt to crack down on an estimated 2 million motorists in California who drive without required insurance. Backers of the law said such drivers constitute 15% of the motorists in the state and cause 40% of the accidents, leaving their victims to absorb the costs.

Under the law, drivers stopped for traffic violations were required to show proof of insurance or face fines and loss of license. An older law, still in effect, requires such proof when filing accident reports.

(The state minimum requirement is liability insurance of $15,000 for bodily injury to a single party, $30,000 for multiple parties and $5,000 for property damage.)

The new law was quickly challenged by lawyers for low-income Los Angeles residents who said their constitutional right to due process was being violated because they were being denied insurance or found it available only at prohibitively high cost.

Insurance in the South-Central section of the city, for example, often exceeded $1,000 per vehicle, they said. The plaintiffs sought an injunction against enforcement of the law, but their request was denied in Los Angeles Superior Court and by the state Court of Appeal.

In December, 1985, the state Supreme Court agreed to hear the dispute, blocking enforcement of the law at least temporarily. Two court members later defeated in last fall’s election--Chief Justice Rose Elizabeth Bird and Justice Cruz Reynoso--joined Justices Stanley Mosk and Allen E. Broussard in voting to review the case.

The case was argued last June but no ruling was issued by the time Bird, Reynoso and Justice Joseph R. Grodin left office in January, and a reargument was ordered before a new court, led by Chief Justice Malcolm M. Lucas. A decision is expected later this year.

In Thursday’s hourlong hearing, the law drew support from Allan Ides, a lawyer representing the Automobile Club of Southern California, which filed a “friend of the court” brief in the case.

Ides disputed Menocal’s contention that low-income motorists were effectively being denied coverage, arguing that private firms were writing insurance in “every single neighborhood” in California.

He said that any driver who cannot obtain private coverage can get insurance through the state-backed “assigned risk” program. The minimum required coverage can be obtained through that program for as little as $516 annually, with additional costs imposed for motorists with poor driving records, he said.

Foley was closely questioned in his defense of the law by Broussard and Mosk, who asked whether the state is not obligated to guarantee that motorists in low-income areas could get affordable insurance.

In response, Foley said some Californians probably cannot afford insurance, just as they cannot afford a car. But, he said, the state is under no constitutional obligation to subsidize or otherwise provide insurance coverage.

“The inability to buy the minimum amount of coverage is no different economically from the inability to buy an automobile,” he said.

Sobriety Checkpoints

The court, in another case involving California motorists, also was urged to bar law enforcement authorities from imposing roadblocks to catch drunk drivers.

Use of sobriety checkpoints, widely employed throughout the nation and upheld by courts in most states that have ruled on their legality, was suspended in California by the high court last December pending a determination of their constitutionality. Two California appellate panels that reviewed the question were divided on their legality.

Amitai Schwartz of San Francisco, arguing the case for the American Civil Liberties Union, conceded the importance of deterring drunk driving but said state constitutional guarantees against unreasonable search and seizure prohibit the detention of any motorist without first having reasonable suspicion he is intoxicated.

The lawyer said there are other ways to combat the problem, such as expanded police patrols that would only stop erratic drivers, and warned that approval of sobriety checkpoints could lead to the indiscriminate use of roadblocks.

A similar concern was expressed during the hearing by Justice Edward A. Panelli, who said he has “serious questions” about the constitutionality of roadblocks. “Because we have a terrible problem (of drunk driving), it seems to me you’re trying to bend the Constitution,” Panelli said during a vigorous defense of the practice by Ronald E. Niver, a deputy state attorney general.

25,000 Deaths Annually

Niver said that carefully regulated roadblocks, where motorists are stopped for as little as 30 seconds for a cursory observance to detect intoxication, are a valid tactic against a serious problem.

Every year, drunk drivers cause 25,000 deaths and 1 million injuries, Niver said. “The question in this case is whether California addresses this national disgrace with sobriety checkpoints,” he said. Justice John A. Arguelles pointed to the accepted legality of stops for such other purposes as finding illegal aliens and detecting cars with mechanical defects.

“In a perfect world we would have unfettered freedom, but it’s not a perfect world,” Arguelles said. He noted the widespread acceptance of the use of metal detectors and X-ray machines to deter airplane hijackings.

“Nobody seems to feel that use of such devices is unfair,” he said. “Is that practice unconstitutional?”

Schwartz replied that there is an “enormous difference” between airport metal detectors and nighttime roadblocks where officers shine flashlights in motorists’ eyes and smell their breath to detect intoxication.

“Thirty seconds may not sound like much,” he said. “But for some people, this can be a frightening experience.”