Information About Florida Driver's License DUI Law

If you are arrested for DUI in Florida there will be two separate cases brought against you and you stand to have your license suspended on the first offense, according to duilaws.com.

This wasn't always the case.

In 1990 a new law came to pass that requires a police officer who pulls over a drunk driver to take away his driver's license.

At the time the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) thought that the new law was unconstitutional and wanted enforcement on the law stopped until a full hearing on the issue could be held.

In September 1990 the ACLU filed suit in Miami federal court seeking a ruling on the law's unconstitutionality. The suit targeted directors of the Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles and the Florida Highway Patrol.

The law allows an arresting officer to seize a person's driver's license on the spot at the time of arrest. The ACLU charged that the law made the officer judge and jury. Robin Blumner, ACLU executive director in Florida at the time said the organization thought the law gave too much power to the individual officer in violation of fundamental rules of the process.

She also said at the time that the law's decorum rule prohibits the person stopped to make disparaging remarks and violates the First Amendment protections for freedom of speech.

According to Ed Birk, a former highway safety department spokesman, Florida's law is modeled on guidelines set down in a 1979 U.S. Supreme Court decision, and similar laws in six other states have survived challenges.

Opponents of the drunk driving law called police officers who stressed that driving is not a right - pompous and arrogant, and people who never miss an opportunity to tell others that driving not their right, but a privilege doled out by them.

The opponents called the officers "suffering stuffed-shirted big shots."

The former party also said they thought that if a person went through a licensing process, where they could drive "free" forever it would cut down on drunk driving.