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Implied Consent and Administrative License Suspension

The rule in every state that by driving you have agreed to a chemical test for alcohol or drugs after a lawful arrest - and the licence suspension that follows a refusal or a failed test, separately from any criminal case.

Informational only - this is not legal advice. These definitions explain general legal vocabulary in plain English. They are not advice about your situation, reading them creates no attorney-client relationship, and the law differs from state to state and changes over time. For advice you can rely on, speak to a lawyer licensed in your state.

What it means

Every state has an implied-consent law: by driving on its roads, a person is deemed to have consented to a breath, blood or urine test for alcohol or drugs when lawfully arrested on suspicion of impaired driving. A driver can still physically refuse, but a refusal has its own consequence - an administrative licence suspension, imposed by the motor-vehicle agency rather than a court, and in many states usable as evidence at a criminal trial. In most states a test result over the legal limit triggers the same kind of administrative suspension.

The administrative case and the criminal case run on separate tracks. The suspension can take effect, and become final, before the criminal charge is resolved, and a driver acquitted of the criminal charge can still lose their licence administratively. The right to contest the suspension usually depends on requesting a hearing within a short window after the arrest, and that deadline is the one most often missed, because the paperwork handed over at the roadside is easy to mistake for the criminal court date.

Constitutional limits apply. The Supreme Court has held that a warrantless breath test may be required as part of a lawful arrest for impaired driving, but a warrantless blood test may not, and a state cannot make refusing a blood test a crime in itself. States that want blood get a warrant, which in many places is now obtained electronically in minutes.

Where this comes from

Implied-consent statutes, the suspension periods for refusal and for a failed test, and the hearing procedure are all state law and differ from state to state. The constitutional line between breath and blood tests was drawn in Birchfield v. North Dakota, 579 U.S. 438 (2016), and the requirement of a warrant for a blood draw absent exigency in Missouri v. McNeely, 569 U.S. 141 (2013).

When people hire a lawyer for this

The reason to call a lawyer the day of the arrest rather than the week after is the administrative hearing deadline, which is short, separate from the court date, and the only chance to keep the licence while the case is pending. The hearing is also the earliest look at the officer's evidence, which is why defence lawyers treat it as more than a formality.

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Part of the LawyerLand plain-English legal glossary. Definitions are written from primary sources - statutes and court rules - and each entry states the authority it rests on, or says plainly when the doctrine is state law with no national rule.

If you cannot afford a lawyer, civil legal aid programmes provide free help with many of these problems: civil legal aid programmes by state.

Related free reference tools: statute of limitations for a personal-injury claim, by state, quoted from each state's official text - part of LawyerLand's legal reference tools.