Maryland is improperly suspending driver’s licenses over unpaid child support without providing parents notice or giving them an opportunity to be heard — a violation of state and federal law.

That’s according to a lawsuit that Maryland Legal Aid, the state’s largest provider of free civil legal services, and Gallagher Evelius & Jones LLP filed on Wednesday in Baltimore Circuit Court on behalf of four men who have experienced repeated wrongful suspensions of their driver’s licenses.

They’re asking a judge to order the state to fix these systemic issues and compensate them for lost income and other harm that they have endured.

“We’re trying to correct a broken system that traps people in poverty,” said Stacy Bensky, senior staff attorney at Maryland Legal Aid, in a statement. “The state’s automated license suspension process suspends parents over and over, so they are stuck in a perpetual state of impending license suspension, making it nearly impossible to maintain steady work.”

“This lawsuit is about fairness, due process, and giving parents a real path to being able to pay their child support and lift their families out of poverty,” she added.

In 2023, Maryland suspended about 20,500 driver’s licenses because of unpaid child support.

Black parents, the NAACP Maryland State Conference reported, experienced 71% of these suspensions from 2015 to 2020 .

Right now, the Maryland Child Support Administration can notify the Maryland Motor Vehicle Administration when people with a regular driver’s license are 60 days or more behind on child support, and those with a commercial driver’s license find themselves at least 120 days in arrears.

The child support administration is first required to send people written notice informing them of their right to request an investigation on several grounds. Those include that a driver’s license suspension would serve as an impediment to current or potential employment, or that they have a disability that prevents them from being able to work.

But instead, the lawsuit alleges, that’s not happening. And the child support administration is blaming issues on its automated system.

The system automatically refers parents who are 60 days or more behind on child support for a driver’s license suspension — even if an exemption applies to them, the lawsuit asserts.

Caseworkers can manually intervene. But the system, the lawsuit claims, will later repeat that process.

Many parents do not learn that their driver’s license is suspended until something else happens, like police pulling them over, the lawsuit alleges.

Take the case of Donte Peoples, one of the four men who’s suing in the case.

Peoples had his driver’s license suspended in 2017, 2021, 2022 and 2023. That’s despite the fact that he had custody of his son and did not owe child support.

He could not find another job as a truck driver for more than six months. And because Peoples could not afford to pay rent, he and his son were evicted, the lawsuit alleges.

The child support administration, the lawsuit states, later conceded that his driver’s license was wrongfully suspended.

The lawsuit also names Veritas HHS, which contracts with the state to provide child support services.

Lawmakers earlier this year passed a bill that automatically exempts people from having their driver’s licenses suspended over unpaid child support if they make at or below 250% of the federal poverty guidelines.

The figure in 2025 is $39,125 per year, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

The legislation also extends the time from 60 days to 120 days that parents with a regular driver’s license can be behind on child support before the state takes action.

Gov. Wes Moore, a Democrat, signed the bill into law.

The measure is set to take effect on Oct. 1.