REAL ID Is Finally Here. What Took States So Long?

The REAL ID enforcement date has been looming for 20 whole years, and now it’s finally here. Starting on May 7, the Transportation Security Administration says it will require airline passengers to show a REAL ID-compliant license or a U.S. passport to board a plane.

Congress passed the REAL ID Act in 2005, mandating a minimum set of security features for state-issued licenses and IDs that can be used to board planes and enter certain federal facilities. The law also requires states to hold licensees’ information in a database that can be checked by other states. Passed in response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, when most of the attackers boarded planes with state-issued IDs, the law was meant to prevent people from getting licensed under a false identity or entering federal facilities using fake IDs.

Why did it take 20 years to put a little star in the upper-right-hand corner of a driver’s license? Turns out there were lots of reasons, from early delays in the regulatory process to political resistance from individuals and states to global disruptions like the COVID-19 pandemic. REAL ID was a controversial proposal from the very beginning, with concerns about privacy and complaints about an unfunded mandate from the federal government. It’s taken states a lot of work — and a string of federal deadline extensions — to come into compliance.

There are still pockets of resistance to the law and questions about exactly what enforcement will look like, with a loosely defined “phased enforcement” period beginning this month. But all 50 states and the District of Columbia are now issuing REAL IDs, and many DMVs are holding extended hours or offering appointments to manage an anticipated surge in applicants before and after the implementation date.

New Requirements

To get a REAL ID, residents have to provide their full legal name, date of birth, proof of Social Security number, two proofs of state residency, and proof of lawful status, according to the Department of Homeland Security. It’s a simple bar to meet in some cases.

But for people who’ve changed their names — including many married women, transgender people and others for all sorts of reasons — it can be more complicated. In those instances, applicants are required to provide marriage certificates or other documentation of every legal name change they’ve had during their life. The documentation burdens grow the more people have changed their names.

“We can’t issue an ID with their current legal name without tying it back to their original name on their birth certificate,” says Russell Shoup, assistant commissioner of administration for the Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security. For standard state IDs, applicants face lower barriers — such as having to present one proof of residency rather than two — though many states have increased their security requirements in the last few decades as well.

The changes will continue to present logistical challenges for states. Since the middle of March, 14 driver licensing centers in Tennessee have been holding extended Saturday hours. Like other states, Tennessee has been publicly promoting the impending REAL ID enforcement date (states are careful not to call it a “deadline,” because they’ll continue issuing compliant licenses after May 7) and inviting residents to make appointments online.

Demand for appointments has surged, Shoup says. The department issued 2,000 REAL ID licenses on one Saturday in early April alone. Tennessee has been issuing REAL IDs since 2019. So far, about 2.8 million licensed drivers have chosen to get one, out of about 5.8 million licensed drivers around the state.

Around the country, more than 137 million REAL IDs had been issued as of May 2022, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures — about half of all active licenses. The numbers have grown since then. Air travelers are more likely to hold REAL IDs than others. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has recently reported about 80 percent of air travelers carrying compliant IDs.

Preparations, Delays and Extensions

States spent lots of time and money preparing to issue REAL IDs. The California Department of Motor Vehicles, for example, created around 1,000 temporary full-time positions to implement REAL ID before it began issuing compliant licenses in 2018, according to a DMV spokesperson. States also had to procure new technology to help verify residents’ identities, train staff on new tech and security measures, and upgrade their physical security so they could safely store sensitive personal documents.

“It’s a big lift,” says Colleen Ogilvie, the Massachusetts registrar of motor vehicles. “I can remember in 2006 being in a meeting and really being shocked at all the agency would have to do to get ready for this. You don’t typically get any funding for these kinds of things. You have to find a way within your own priorities and budgets to meet the compliance.”

States have come into compliance at different rates. State legislatures had to allocate new funding to comply with the mandates, and in some cases there was political resistance. In 2007, for example, the Maine Legislature passed An Act To Prohibit Maine from Participating in the Federal REAL ID Act of 2005. Arizona passed a similar law in 2008. Other states simply took longer to put the pieces in place to begin issuing compliant IDs.

Rates of uptake vary as well. One recent report noted that New Jersey has the lowest portion of licensees with REAL IDs, while other states, including Colorado, Florida, and the District of Columbia, report near-total compliance.

In response to a range of concerns and objections from states, delays in establishing rules and regulations, and disruptions like the COVID-19 pandemic, the federal government extended the implementation date for REAL ID several times. There have been three extensions of the implementation date just since April of 2020.

“States had to make a number of investments in the way they vet the identity of somebody at the counter,” says Ian Grossman, president and CEO of the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators (AAMVA). “All jurisdictions are now deemed compliant and all have been offering the products for years and doing significant public outreach.”

Privacy Concerns

Even though all jurisdictions are deemed to be in compliance with the REAL ID Act, some political resistance remains, mainly around issues of privacy. Many privacy advocates, including the American Civil Liberties Union, have objected to what they consider a national ID.

The Maine ACLU recently testified in favor of a bill in the state Legislature that would repeal the laws allowing the state to issue REAL ID licenses. Sponsors, which include both Republicans and Democrats, have said the requirements could put residents’ personal information at risk of hacking and identity theft. The more personal data collected by the government, the greater the risk of it being stolen or used in unintended ways, opponents argue.

“Mainers don’t want any government — federal, state or otherwise — infringing on their privacy,” says Maine state Rep. Laurel Libby, a Republican sponsor of the bill. “It’s not a partisan issue. It’s an issue of recognizing that the government should be serving and protecting, not mandating essentially a 50-state database.”

Grossman, of AAMVA, notes that while the REAL ID is a federal requirement, it is not a federal ID. The licenses are still issued by individual states and territories. They are required to store the information in a database that can be checked by agencies in other states — to guarantee that residents only hold a REAL ID in one state at a time — but that’s not the same as a national database.

“It might be a federal standard, but it’s not a federally or nationally issued ID,” Grossman says. “There is no centralized collection of information.”

That distinction is too fine for some. “It’s a national ID in the meaningful sense,” says Jim Harper, a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a right-leaning think tank. Harper has opposed the REAL ID requirements on privacy grounds since before the law was passed. He wrote a book about those objections with the Cato Institute in 2006.

He notes that despite the impending implementation date, there are still questions about how the REAL ID requirements will be enforced. The final rule that TSA published earlier this year refers to a “phased enforcement” approach starting May 7, without clearly outlining what the phases will be. The Department of Homeland Security says that travelers who show up at an airport after May 7 with neither REAL ID nor a passport “can expect to face delays, additional screening and the possibility of not being permitted into the security checkpoint.” To Harper it’s an indication that the “deadline” is being extended yet again.

“What shouldn’t go unmentioned is the possibility of Congress just repealing the law,” Harper says. “That’s as likely, and possibly more likely, than it ever being fully implemented.”

Meanwhile, many state agencies are working to improve identity security using digital technology, Grossman says. They’re finally issuing REAL ID-compliant licenses, and the rest is up to the federal government.

“There’s still some unknowns and concerns of what will happen when enforcement begins,” Grossman says. “The broader community in this identity space is ready to move on.”