California legislature removes REAL-ID compliance from Governor’s budget
The California Senate and Assembly have removed funding and legislative changes to upload drivers license data to the private SPEXS national ID database from Governor Gavin Newsom’s proposed budget.
This isn’t the final decision. The legislature has to pass its version of a budget by June 15th, but the final budget and associated legislative changes may not be enacted until sometime in August, after negotiations between the legislature and the Governor’s office. But as
Some state legislators are still trying to find ways to put “guardrails” on California license and ID data that will protect it even after it is uploaded to the national database. But the more carefully they study the problem, the more they realize that nothing the state could do would prevent this data from being obtained by Federal or out-of-state law enforcement agencies, without the knowledge of the DMV or the Californians against whom it could be weaponized, once it is uploaded to AAMVA, an out-of-state nongovernmental entity.
This is too important a decision to bury in the budget as an afterthought.
There’s no rush. The DMV’s target date for the upload was set by AAMVA, for its convenience, not by Federal or state law. Removing this from the budget and abandoning postponing any approval until next year (if this ill-considered plan by the DMV and the Governor isn’t abandoned), will give time to consider the implications and the alternatives.
Instead of preemptively capitulating to legally dubious Federal threats to harass California air travelers if the state doesn’t comply with the REAL-ID Act, the Governor should call the Feds bluff, stand up to the DHS, task the state’s Attorney General with preparing to defend Californians against any interference with our right to travel.