No D.C. Checkpoint Statute: the Roadside Breath Test Is Voluntary

Proving this absence structurally matters, because the District is small enough that a driver crosses the boundary several times a day. Chapter 19 of Title 50, the chemical-testing chapter, runs from § 50-1901 to § 50-1912 and contains no checkpoint or roadblock provision. Chapter 22 of Title 50, which carries the DUI offences at §§ 50-2206.11 through 50-2206.18 and the whole regulation-of-traffic scheme, contains none either. Neither does Chapter 1 of Title 5, the Metropolitan Police chapter, nor Chapter 3A, the First Amendment Rights and Police Standards chapter. There is no authorising statute, no signage requirement, no advance-publication requirement, no supervisory-approval statute and no statutory pattern rule of the kind several states enacted.

The one place the word roadblock does appear in District law is a decoy. D.C. Code § 5-365.01(4), in the vehicular pursuit chapter added by the Comprehensive Policing and Justice Reform Amendment Act of 2022, defines "deploying a roadblock" as a tactic in which an officer intentionally places a vehicle or object in the path of a suspect vehicle with the intent to stop it. Section 5-365.03(c)(1)(C) then classifies deploying a roadblock as a serious use of force. That is a pursuit-tactic rule about chasing one fleeing car, not a sobriety checkpoint provision, and it does not authorise anything.

What the District regulates instead is the individualised suspicion standard at the roadside. Section 50-1904.01(a) permits a preliminary breath test only where the officer has reasonable grounds to believe the person was operating or in physical control of a vehicle within the District while intoxicated or impaired by alcohol, a drug or a combination. The device must be one the Mayor has approved by rule. Subsection (b) requires the officer, before administering the test, to advise the person that the preliminary breath test is voluntary and that its result will be used to aid the officer's decision whether to arrest. Subsection (c) then bars the District from using the result as evidence in any prosecution and makes it inadmissible in any judicial proceeding, except where the validity of the arrest or the officer's conduct is itself at issue. Those provisions were added by the Comprehensive Impaired Driving and Alcohol Testing Program Amendment Act of 2012, D.C. Law 19-266, effective April 27, 2013, after a run of 90-day emergency acts that have since lapsed.

Implied consent in the District attaches only after arrest. Section 50-1904.02(a) provides that a person is deemed to have consented to submitting two specimens of blood, breath or urine after arrest, and separately requires two specimens where the person was involved in a collision in the District. The officer elects the specimen type, subject to a religious or medical objection to blood collection under subsection (b), in which case only breath or urine may be required. So the roadside portable test and the post-arrest chemical test are governed by different rules, and refusing the roadside one does not carry the licence consequence.

Refusal after arrest does. Under § 50-1905(a) the driver must first be told that refusal will revoke the privilege to drive in the District, and a District licence holder must additionally be told that refusal will require enrollment in the Ignition Interlock System Program under § 50-2201.05a. On a sworn officer's report the Mayor then revokes the privilege to drive in the District for 12 months, or denies issuance of a licence for 12 months from the date of the alleged violation for a person without one. Section 50-1905(c) makes the refusal itself admissible in any civil or criminal proceeding, and § 50-1905(b) creates a rebuttable presumption of being under the influence where the person has a prior conviction under § 50-2206.11, § 50-2206.12 or § 50-2206.14. Where a refusal follows a collision resulting in a fatality, § 50-1905(d) allows an officer with reasonable grounds to employ whatever means are reasonable to collect blood, or breath or urine where a valid religious or medical objection to blood is raised.

One interaction is worth flagging. D.C. Code § 48-921.02a normally prevents the odor of marijuana, or possession of an unquantified amount, from amounting to reasonable articulable suspicion. Subsection (b) switches that protection off when the officer is investigating whether a person is operating or in physical control of a vehicle or watercraft while intoxicated, under the influence of, or impaired by alcohol or a drug, under § 50-2206.01 et seq.

01(c) bars the District from using the result in a prosecution. 05a. 14 faces a rebuttable presumption of being under the influence under § 50-1905(b). A driver may seek a hearing on the revocation order under § 50-1906 and judicial review under § 50-1907. Enforcement is by the Metropolitan Police Department, with revocation administered by the Department of Motor Vehicles.