Court Upholds Law Taking Dropouts’ Driver’s Licenses

The state Supreme Court on Friday upheld a state law that allows young school dropouts to be denied or stripped of their driver’s license.

The court split 3 to 2 in upholding the nation’s first law aimed at denying licenses to 16- and 17-year-old dropouts who fail to complete school.

Chief Justice Richard Neely said affected students must be offered a hearing before the superintendent of schools or an authorized official before they quit school so they can be notified of the consequences.

The law was passed by the Legislature in 1988 to allow revocation or denial of a license to a student who drops out before completing high school.

Christopher Butch, attorney for dropout Michael Means of Charleston, said the court test was a first in the nation. “The whole world is watching you today,” Butch argued when the case was presented.

Means lost his license when he quit school in 1988. He turned 16 on March 26, 1988, and dropped out of school the next month. He lost his license even though the law was not enacted until that June.

The court said the Means case is moot because the teen-ager is now 18 and can get a license, but it ruled on the matter anyway.

Neely said the law provides that when the withdrawal of a student from school is by mutual consent of school authorities and the youth, a waiver of the license revocation may be granted.