Lawmakers take up 'noncitizen' label on Wyoming IDs

Draft bill to be discussed Friday afternoon in Legislature’s Transportation Committee.

JACKSON — Driver’s licenses and identification cards issued to legal immigrants in Wyoming could require a “Not a United States citizen” label if the Wyoming Legislature backs an upcoming bill draft.

The Joint Transportation, Highways and Military Affairs Interim Committee will spend part of its last meeting before the 2025 general session considering a “Noncitizen driver’s license and ID card-revisions” bill.

A request for the draft was made at the committee’s September meeting and comes amidst efforts to prevent noncitizens from voting.

There have been no recent reports of noncitizens voting.

The meeting is scheduled to start at 8:30 a.m. Friday in the Capitol. To watch the livestream, go to WyoLeg.gov. The driver’s license draft bill is tentatively set to be considered at 2 p.m.

Transportation Committee Co-Chair Rep. Landon Brown, R-Cheyenne, said the bill is “belts and suspenders to an already existing law.”

Wyoming law prevents any undocumented noncitizen from applying for a driver’s license or identification card, and Brown said the proposed legislation would bolster that language.

Co-Chair Sen. Brian Boner, R-Douglas, was not available for comment before press time. However, during the September meeting, he called a line of questioning about noncitizen labels “off-topic.”

The questions came up as part of a larger discussion of revisions to driver’s license laws — like adding a fee for replacement licenses. Boner told lawmakers to request a separate bill draft if they wanted to take up the topic of adding noncitizen labels.

“I think this is coming from unsubstantiated fears about people in Wyoming having access to elections,” Brown said Monday.

Sponsoring a bill, he said, allows lawmakers to go back to their constituents “at the end of the year and say, ‘Hey, look, there’s no chance that an undocumented citizen is voting in our elections.’”

As the draft stands, identification cards would carry the label “Not a United States Citizen” for people — such as refugees and students — who are legal residents but not U.S. citizens.

Legislative staff also recommended language such as “Not valid for official federal purposes,” which is on driver’s licenses in states like California, Hawaii, Maryland and New York. Connecticut requires “Not acceptable for federal identification or voting purposes” on its IDs, and Colorado uses the label “Not valid for federal identification, voting or federal public benefits purposes.”

Secretary of State Chuck Gray said in a statement that he is in “complete and total support of this bill, because it helps ensure that only citizens are able to register to vote.”

He also called election integrity “a number one priority for our administration.”

Policy advocates who have pushed back on some of the election integrity measures proposed by Gray and the Legislature also weighed in Tuesday.

Equality State Policy Center Policy Director Marissa Carpio said in a statement Tuesday that the nonprofit recognizes the need for clear voter eligibility guidelines.

“However, proposed legislation to mark documented noncitizens driver’s licenses in Wyoming risks exposing lawful and documented immigrants to discrimination,” Carpio said. “Instead, ESPC recommends using more neutral language mentioned in the staff comments of the draft bill, ‘not valid for voting purposes,’ to indicate those legally unable to vote.

“This could include individuals with unexpunged felony convictions or who are declared mentally incompetent by a judge,” she said. “That wording better upholds the rights and dignity of all community members.”

Civic Engagement Director Rosa Reyna-Pugh added that documented noncitizens who could legally apply for a Wyoming driver’s license include a person from Ukraine seeking refuge, a migrant worker or an international student attending a Wyoming institution.

“These are lawful residents who contribute to our communities and often need a driver’s license to do so,” Reyna-Pugh said.

With only so much time for committees to dig into issues and sponsor bills before each legislative session, the noncitizen driver’s license bill was not on the agenda for the September meeting or a priority set for the interim by the committee. But it will take up time along with topics such as highway funding, veteran’s mental health and speed limits for county roads.

Brown said the bill is not what the committee needs to be handling right now, but he expects more topics like this will be brought up in the future following last week’s election results. The Freedom Caucus, an anti-establishment group in the Republican Party, took control of the House with 34 seats, according to WyoFile.com.

“The Freedom Caucus is going to rule,” said Brown, who also won reelection. “We’re going to have a lot of these social issue bills that are probably nonsensical to a lot of people.”

In the case of the noncitizen bill, he said there’s “no harm, no foul in this discussion.”

Even if the Transportation Committee didn’t take up the bill, he said, an individual lawmaker likely would bring it to the session anyway.

“It’s probably not worth it to fight this battle,” he said of trying to keep the committee focused on other topics.

This story was published on November 13, 2024.