RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — It can start with a couple of traffic tickets. Unable to pay the tickets right away, a driver becomes saddled with late fees, fines and court costs. Soon, the driver may be taken off the road indefinitely. More than 40 states allow the suspension of driver’s licenses for people with unpaid criminal or traffic court debt. But now, advocates across the country are pushing to change that, arguing that such laws are unconstitutional because they unfairly punish poor people and violate due process by not giving drivers notice or an opportunity to show they cannot afford to pay the fees. Lawsuits have been filed in at least five states over the past two years.

“It’s not that I don’t want to take care of what I owe. I really wish I could,” said Brianna Morgan, a single mother from Petersburg, Virginia, who hasn’t had a license in three years because she owes more than $400 in traffic fines and court costs from traffic violations and a disorderly conduct citation. “I really don’t have a way to pay it,” said Morgan, who supports herself and her three children on a monthly disability check.

Advocates had a victory this week in Tennessee, where a federal judge ruled that a law that allows the state to revoke the licenses of low-income people with unpaid court debt from past criminal convictions is unconstitutional. U.S. District Judge Aleta Trauger called the law “powerfully counterproductive” and ordered Tennessee to stop revoking licenses and to reinstate the licenses of people who had theirs revoked due solely to nonpayment of court fees. “If a person has no resources to pay a debt, he cannot be threatened or cajoled into paying it; he may, however, become able to pay it in the future. But taking his driver’s license away sabotages that prospect,” Trauger wrote in her ruling Monday.

In Virginia, nearly a million people currently have suspended driver’s licenses at least in part because of unpaid court debt, according to the Legal Aid Justice Center, a nonprofit that is challenging the practice in a federal lawsuit. A judge dismissed the case on jurisdictional grounds, but in a ruling in May, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals gave the case new life, sending it back to the lower court to allow the plaintiffs to revise the lawsuit.

Millions of drivers nationwide have lost licenses because of such laws. In a study released in September, the justice center estimated that 4.2 million people then had suspended or revoked licenses for unpaid court debt in five states alone: Virginia, Tennessee, Michigan, North Carolina and Texas.

Lawsuits are pending in North Carolina, Montana and Michigan, in addition to Virginia and Tennessee. In California, legislation enacted last year prohibits state courts from suspending driver’s licenses simply because of unpaid traffic fines.

But supporters of the laws say people who violate traffic laws must be held accountable.

Virginia Republican state Sen. Bill Carrico said the threat of losing a license can provide incentive to pay fines.

“If we don’t suspend driver’s licenses, then people will say, ’I’m not going to pay the fine,’” Carrico said. “That’s a slippery slope.”

A separate lawsuit still pending in Tennessee challenges a law that allows the state to take away the driver’s licenses of people with unpaid traffic debt.

For Ashley Sprague, a 27-year-old mother of five from Lebanon, Tennessee, who is a plaintiff in that case, the thought of paying $946 in traffic debt, plus $388 to get her license reinstated, was overwhelming.

Her debt began in 2015 after she got a citation for speeding and failure to have proof of insurance. At the time, she made $2.13 an hour, plus tips, as a waitress at Waffle House.

Sprague said she couldn’t afford to pay and lost two jobs while her license was suspended because she had to rely on other people to get to work.

In the Virginia case, Judge Roger Gregory, chief justice of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, wrote that the state’s system does not differentiate between those unable to pay from those unwilling to pay.

“By suspending the licenses of those who cannot pay for reasons outside of their control, the state traps thousands of Virginians in a nightmarish spiral for which there is no apparent exit,” Gregory wrote.

But Jonathan Turley, a professor at George Washington University Law School, said he thinks it’s unlikely the lawsuits will succeed in getting other states to stop suspending licenses for nonpayment of fees.

“There’s no question that suspension for failure to pay a fine is the hardest on those who cannot pay the fine, but courts will be concerned about the slippery slope narrative,” Turley said.

“If there is a constitutional barrier to the suspension of licenses for failure to pay a fine, where does that right begin and end? Does that apply to all permits and licenses?”

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RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — A commission studying what to do with the most prominent Confederate monuments in Richmond, Virginia, recommended Monday removing one honoring Confederate President Jefferson Davis. The panel of historians, local officials and others that spent around a year studying and soliciting public input about the statues on the city’s historic Monument Avenue also urged the addition of permanent signage with historical context near the monuments. Further, leaders should add new monuments that would reflect a “more inclusive” story of the city’s history, the commission said in a more than 100-page report. “In the course of the work, it became abundantly clear the majority of the public acknowledges Monument Avenue cannot and should not remain exactly as it is. Change is needed and desired,” said the report, which is not legally binding.

Richmond, a former capital of the Confederacy, has some of the largest and most prominent Confederate monuments in the United States, where a mass shooting at a black church in South Carolina and a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville have heightened a national debate over whether such symbols should remain on display.

The commission studied what to do with the five soaring Confederate statues that dot Monument Avenue, a prestigious residential street lined with mansions and divided by a grassy median.

The Davis statue “is the most unabashedly Lost Cause in its design and sentiment,” the report said in a reference to an interpretation of the war that historians say romanticizes the South and de-emphasizes the role of slavery.

An inscription on the Davis monument, for instance, “styles the Confederate president as a ‘Defender of the Rights of States,’” the report noted.

That monument should be removed, pending litigation or changes in state law, said the report, which suggested that one part could be relocated to Davis’ grave at Richmond’s Hollywood Cemetery.

A state law currently on the books, which the Republican-controlled General Assembly has shown no appetite for changing, prohibits local governments or others from “disturbing or interfering with” memorials to war veterans. The statute is at the center of a lawsuit playing out in Charlottesville over that city’s effort to remove two Confederate statues.

Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney said in a statement that he would be studying its recommendations further before taking any other steps, though he said he agreed with the report’s finding that “something needs to change.”

“Richmond has a long, complex and conflicted history, and the Confederate statues on Monument Avenue represents a shameful part of our past,” Stoney said. “As I have said before, the statues on this beautiful street are Lost Cause myth and deception masquerading as history. They are monuments to Jim Crow that do not reflect the qualities of inclusivity, tolerance and equality we celebrate as values in our city today.”

When Stoney first announced the formation of the commission, he said the statues should not be taken down but should be supplemented with historical context about why they were built. But after a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville last summer descended into violent chaos, the mayor expanded the panel’s mandate to include removal as a possibility.

While the Richmond commission completed its work and a similar study took place in Louisville, Kentucky, many other U.S. cities moved more quickly after the Charlottesville rally to take down their Confederate statues or symbols.

For instance, four Confederacy-related monuments were hauled away in Baltimore just days after the rally.

In Memphis, Tennessee, city leaders used a legal loophole to get around a state law protecting historical memorials by selling the city parks where three Confederate leaders stood to a nonprofit, which swiftly removed the monuments under the cover of darkness.

The panel in Louisville, Kentucky, released a report Saturday saying public displays honoring the Confederacy were unwelcome and not representative of the city today.

In Richmond, the first monument, honoring Gen. Robert E. Lee, was erected in 1890, decades after the end of the Civil War.

The other statues — to Davis, J.E.B. Stuart, Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson and Matthew Fontaine Maury, an oceanographer and commander in the Confederate Navy — were raised in the early 20th Century, when Jim Crow laws were eroding the rights of black citizens.

A statue of black tennis hero Arthur Ashe, a Richmond native, was added to Monument Avenue in 1996, provoking a nationally publicized and racially charged dispute.

One of the panel’s suggestions was to commission a monument dedicated to soldiers of the United States Colored Troops, regiments of mostly formerly enslaved men who fought for the Union.

“The juxtaposition to the Confederate Statues could be a powerful statement,” the report said.