mauve

I have a non-REAL ID California license, and although I am a U.S. citizen, it’s indistinguishable from the “AB60” licenses that California issues to undocumented immigrants. And the DMV won’t renew licenses until 4 months before they expire, so I’m stuck with it for a bit.

I assume the TSA will keep accepting it even in Florida, and I have other documents I could use to fly. But, with SB 1718 taking effect on July 1, I can’t tell if I’ll be allowed to drive in Florida.

Does anyone who understands the laws, or local low enforcement, better than me have any insight?

DELee

You could "lose" your CA license and request a replacement in-person and have the documentation ready to get a REAL ID CA license.

David

TWA884

You don't have to wait until your California driver's license is near expiration to apply to replace it with a Real ID compliant license; however, the expiration date of the Real ID license will be the same as that of your current non-compliant license.

GUWonder

How will they determine who is an undocumented immigrant based on a driver’s license in a situation where state driver’s license is a legacy non-“REAL ID” DL and the DL holder is most certainly not an undocumented immigrant as evidenced by USG-issued ID indicating US citizenship?

Aren’t foreign country’s driving licenses still being accepted in Florida in conjunction with a passport and/or other USG-issued documentation for legal visitors, legal immigrants and non-resident US citizens with a foreign DL?

mauve

Foreign drivers licenses are still being accepted as far as I can tell. But many US ones won’t be. The law takes effect in about two weeks and the state still hasn’t stated which ones they won’t take. So the only way to find out may be when you end up in a jail cell for driving without a license.

mauve

As a follow up, Florida has published the list of licenses they won’t accept.

It doesn’t include California, but since they don’t “warrant the accuracy of the information contained herein” and non-REAL ID California licenses also “Not For Federal Identification,” I guess it’s sort of up to officer discretion what they actually allow.

GUWonder

On what basis are they cherry picking which non-REAL ID-compliant US DL’s aren’t acceptable in FL? They blacklist some DL’s from Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Rhode Island and Vermont but leave out most other states.

The US-issued DL which I use is not REAL ID-compliant, but seems like FL may still accept it. But given FL has the following clown language:

“The information in this list necessarily and unavoidably is evolving, may change due to the revision of driver license issuance requirements in other states, and will be updated periodically. The Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles does not warrant the accuracy of the information contained herein.”

still not sure what kind of circus to expect.

Maybe I will pick up a supplementary non-US DL and then complain about foreign-issued DLs being treated better in Florida than American-issued DLs in Florida.

DELee

It's fine. All other IDs besides the FL ones will melt right now anyways.

David

mauve

I’m not a lawyer, and I very much don’t speak for the Florida government, but the stated goal is to exclude licenses issued primarily to undocumented immigrants. It looks like I some of the licenses they banned aren’t available to US nationals at all.

I am also not sure how this works with the full faith and credit clause of the US Constitution, but that’s probably getting into Omni territory.