Minnesota limited license and reinstatement

Minnesota can let you drive for work, treatment, family needs or school during a revocation — 15 days after a first DWI. Getting the full license back after a DWI costs $680 per revocation, or half to start.

What a Minnesota limited license is

A limited license lets a person whose Minnesota license is suspended, revoked or canceled keep driving for specific needs. The commissioner of public safety “may issue” one — it is discretionary — after the suspensions and revocations section 171.30 lists, which include an insurance revocation and, for impaired driving, the first-tier revocations where the test result was under twice the legal limit.

The three needs it serves

• Livelihood or treatment: the driver's job, or attendance at a substance use disorder treatment or counselling program, depends on driving.
• A homemaker's household: the person primarily doing the domestic tasks for a household with dependents needs to drive to prevent substantial disruption of the family's education, medical or nutritional needs.
• School: an enrolled student's attendance at a postsecondary institution depends on driving.

Conditions the commissioner can set

The commissioner may impose whatever conditions public safety requires, including re-examination, and may limit the license to particular vehicles, classes, times and traffic conditions. The applicant can be asked to show that public transport or carpooling would be a significant hardship. The commissioner weighs the number and seriousness of prior convictions, the whole driving record and the miles driven each year. No class A, B or C limited license is issued — commercial driving is out.

How long you wait

• 15 days after a first impaired-driving or implied-consent revocation.
• 60 days after a felony committed with a vehicle, or after failing to stop at a crash causing death or injury.
• One year after vehicular manslaughter or the listed criminal vehicular operation offenses.
• Under 18: the longer of 90 days or twice the period above.

Some people cannot have one at all — among them anyone suspended or revoked for criminal vehicular homicide or a careless-driving death.

After an insurance revocation: insurance first

Where the revocation was for driving without insurance or failing to show proof, a limited license issues only after the driver presents an insurance card, policy or written statement of coverage satisfactory to the commissioner — and the commissioner may require the card to be certified by the insurer as noncancelable for up to 12 months. It is Minnesota's nearest equivalent of a filing requirement: the insurer, not the driver, vouches that the cover will stay in place.

Breaking the conditions

Driving outside the conditions, or without the limited license in your possession, is a misdemeanor — and the person may not drive at all for the rest of the suspension or revocation, or 30 days, whichever is longer. People in the ignition interlock program follow that program's own rules instead.

For the higher-tier impaired-driving revocations a limited license is not the route; the Minnesota ignition interlock program is. It lets a person drive on a 0.02 device during the revocation and ends only after a clean final stretch.

Getting the full license back: the $680

A person revoked for impaired driving or under the implied-consent sections pays “a $250 fee plus a $430 surcharge for each instance of revocation” before the license is reinstated — $680 per revocation. For those revocations, the person may instead pay half the total plus $25 to reinstate a license that expires after two years, then pay the remaining half less $25 to extend it two more years. Revocations for insurance violations and the other listed sections cost a single $30 fee.

Reinstatement also requires everything else the revocation order lists — often a knowledge test for non-impaired revocations, assessment and program completion for impaired-driving ones. Minnesota does not use the SR-22 for this; the no-fault security requirement applies to every registered vehicle, and the interlock page covers proof within the program.

Common questions