Davis Drops Idea of Fee for Disabled Drivers’ Placards

In an abrupt turnabout, Gov. Gray Davis said Friday he is ready to give up the state’s controversial fight to charge disabled drivers $6 for their blue parking placards.

He said the California appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court threatens the national Americans With Disabilities Act, and “I simply will not be party to any lawsuit that could put the [act] in jeopardy.”

At a hastily called press conference, Davis said he will direct the state’s lawyers to settle the case rather than pursue the appeal. It was unclear what they would settle for.

The court fight centered on the disabilities act’s prohibition of any government’s charging fees for programs that are necessary to assure nondiscriminatory treatment of the disabled.

Ruling on a suit that was filed against the state in 1996 when Republican Pete Wilson was governor, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals last year upheld a lower court opinion that said California’s fee violated the act. In February, Davis appealed to the Supreme Court, saying the parking tags were a “supplemental” benefit offered by the state at a rate below cost.

The familiar blue plastic tags that drivers hang from their rear-view mirrors cost $6 every two years and are acquired by 1 million motorists annually, but the state has not collected the fee for some years.

The placards entitle disabled drivers to free parking at meters and in specially marked spaces elsewhere.

The Democratic governor’s surprise reversal came two weeks after disabled-rights activists protested at the Capitol against the governor’s plan to fight for the right to levy the fee.

Some protesters also quietly suggested to Democratic legislators that they might demonstrate outside the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles if Davis persisted in pursuing the appeal to the Supreme Court, sources said.

Earlier, a Davis spokeswoman had said the governor opposed a settlement because the state probably would end up paying millions of dollars in legal fees to out-of-state plaintiff’s lawyers.

Davis said Friday that if settlement negotiations with attorneys representing disabled people go well, “my intention is to order an end to California’s appeal.”

Asked what issues remained for state lawyers to settle when he had declared his intention to quit the fight, Davis at first seemed puzzled.

Then, he suggested lawyers could look at “options.”

He said pressure to abandon the case came not from drivers who wanted free parking, but from disabled Californians who feared the state’s suit could jeopardize key components of the Americans With Disabilities Act.

Senate President Pro Tem John L. Burton (D-San Francisco), who had been critical of the decision to appeal, commended Davis for backing off. “The suit would have gone at the very heart of whether or not the [act] applied to the states,” said Burton.