Troopers take the oath serving Commissioner Jeff Long, bottom right, who prosecutes private users of the road with licenses “fabricated out of thin air,” says Arthur Jay Hirsch, one of their victims whom the state is prosecuting in Lawrence County, Tenn., for “driving on suspended.” (Photos David Tulis, department of safety)
Wednesday, April 22, 2026 – Jeff Long, Tennessee safety commissioner, is running a scam against the public by creating fake driver licenses and suspending them, a program that has afflicted tens of thousands of Tennesseans over decades.
The suit adds notoriety to Mr. Long, an appointee of Gov. Bill Lee, who is under three lawsuits for a mass fraud under the financial responsibility law that enriches insurance companies with F$2 billion in free premiums a year coerced from the piblic.
On Monday, Mr. Hirsch, who is known as the “fiddle man of Lawrence County” for gospel tunes in nursing homes and in the county jail at Christmas, mailed under certificate for a contested case to challenge a state practice that has afflicted him with four criminal cases.
“ I want them to remove that record because there’s no evidence that I had a license before or there are any circumstances or grounds” for assigning and suspending a license. “These are people who know they are fabricating evidence, and I want it stricken and expunged.”
Mr. Hirsch, a practicing Christian, insists on exercising his constitutionally guaranteed right of ingress and egress, of free movement on the public right of way in his private automobile.
“They fabricate a license out of thin air, the thing into being and then slay it on the altar of public convenience in the name of public safety,” says Christopher Sapp, midstate bureau chief for NoogaRadio Network in Chattanooga.
Behind the administrative trick is a desire by DOSHS to have authority over every user of the road, Mr. Hirsch says. The legal establishment has cohered around a legal fiction that all use of the public road is commercial, forbidding pleasure or private use even under exercise and enjoyment of rights guaranteed by the constitution. Court cases premised on the theory often decry defendants who fight back in traffic cases as “sovereign citizens.”
Brenda Simpson of Savannah, Tenn., stands outside the Hardin County courthouse in Savannah where she is being prosecuted for “driving on suspended.” (Photo David Tulis).
As many as 300,000 Tennesseans have had their driver licenses suspended, often due to unpaid court costs, fines or non-driving-related issues. A 2019 estimate indicated that about 118,000 Tennesseans have suspended licenses. Nationally, 11 million people are suspended under poverty and unpaid fines,, according to Vera Institute.
Mr. Hirsch sues under Tennessee’s uniform administrative procedures act that requires an administrative hearing officer either from the department or perhaps a more neutral judge from the secretary of state’s office. The law authorizes the safety commissioner to hear all matters pertaining to licenses, even the most mundane traffic case.
Departmental workaround
According to testimony of former safety commissioner David Purkey, cited in a ruling by U.S. District Court judge Alita Trauger, the department assigns a person a driver license number.
An official creates an account for a person, often with limited or outdated information, and creates a driver license account. The staffer then suspends the license by its number and enters the person into the DOSHS driver database as a licensee suspended.
No authority exists in the Tennessee code for such action, Mr. Hirsch says.
In the case of State vs. Brenda Simpson, 76, of Savannah, the department assigned her license and suspended it, causing her to be arrested. In one case she was jailed two months.
Mrs. Simpson did not receive notice of suspension because the state did not send her notice, the department having used a former address. Mrs. Simpson is a licensed public notary known to the state at her address at 4165 Lonesome Pine Road.
Mrs. Simpson retired from being a driver-operator for a motor vehicle vehicle in 2019, and was suspended in 2024
That means a person who is no longer a licensee, or who has not had a driver license and not applied for one in Tennessee, is now a licensee, but with a permit that is suspended.
“Licenses don’t have an evergreen contract that they stay in effect forever,” says Mr, Sapp. He describes the process as a forgery. “These people don’t want to be in the privilege. It’s not that they’re tax evaders or anything else. They want to be in the private on the roads thrown open for public vehicular use.”
A suspension of a current valid driver license is treated the same as one contrived by the department. The courts view all suspensions equally.
‘Lawful authority’?
States the Hirsch petition,
The legal issue is whether DOS has lawful authority to create and maintain such a record absent an application, issuance, or statutory basis. (Petitioner has no record of applying for or receiving a driver license, yet the DOS maintains a record, assigning and numbering such a license, and marking it as suspended.
Mr. Hirsch says that the department uses an illicit form of ID appropriation to give the license a simulacra of authenticity.
He says the practice violates federal law, which controls all Tennessee traffic enforcement operations under agreement between Nashville and Washington.
Federal law requires driver license applications to contain specific information collected in specific formats. Once the case gets under way, Mr. Hirsch intends to discern the number of violations of federal law imposed by the department in every purported suspension.
“Are the roads open to anyone or just to licensees?” Mr. Sapp says.
Jay Hirsch has entered his complaint in the department of safety as part of his defense in a criminal prosecution on three counts for driving on suspended in Lawrence County.
