# TSA require your U.S. driver's license to have a star to fly in 2020... **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [May 25, 2019, 6:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tsa-require-your-u-s-drivers-license-to-have-a-star-to-fly-in-2020/834496 "2019-05-25T06:38:39Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 82
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2019, 10:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tsa-require-your-u-s-drivers-license-to-have-a-star-to-fly-in-2020/834496/82 "2019-05-26T10:35:43Z")
> [@Lord\_Feldon](#): > > To get a first class airplane-qualified drivers license, I’d have to show, for instance, my passport AND some other BS like a utility bill I could whip up in Microsoft Word, even though the passport is valid for the same Real ID purposes by itself. When I went to get my driver’s license renewed (expiring soon and I had moved) I was told that they would NOT accept computer print-outs of bills - they had to have a paper bill _mailed_ to your address with a valid postmark. I suspect different states are requiring/enforcing document rules differently in this matter. > [@Bear\_Nenno](#): > > I’m not sure the actual purpose of providing an SSN. But I know that you don’t actually have to present the card to obtain a RealID. Again - mileage seems to vary from state to state. I was also told that for my state a valid SS card was required to get RealID -OR- you could use something like a W2 from work… IF that W2 was _mailed_ to you as a physical document, NOT printed off your computer. The “no computer print-out” was communicated at the BMV, not in th on-line information. My company, like many, has been pushing people towards direct deposit an on-line W2’s for years. If they’ve already issued a W2 to you for that year they will not mail you another. You can switch to “paper copy, please, and mail it” for _next_ year, but that doesn’t help you if you need to renew a license before then. > [@Lord\_Feldon](#): > > And making people re-verify their identity and citizenship isn’t necessarily an easy thing either. Not everyone has easy access to things like birth certificates and (for people who changed their names) marriage certificates, especially elderly people. [This article](https://www.npr.org/2018/09/07/644648955/for-older-voters-getting-the-right-id-can-be-especially-tough) is about voter ID, but some of the same challenges apply here too. I actually still had my marriage certificate, but the state of Indiana would not accept it, saying it did not comply with modern document standards (?!?). I had to go back to Illinois to get a “modern” copy. At that, I was better off than the elderly couple sitting next to me - the BMV bitch flat out told them that if they didn’t have a marriage certificate in hand they weren’t really married and the woman had been fraudulently using the “wrong” name all these years, then couldn’t understand why the little old lady burst out into tears at that. > [@Bear\_Nenno](#): > > Now you’re saying that we shouldn’t require people to prove who they are at all. That seems like the bare minimum requirement for issuing identification–verifying identity. Part of the problem is that the nation had gotten along with identifying people quite well without such elaborate verification and now all of sudden people are having to dig up documents from decades ago, half a century ago, even longer for the elderly… this is not such a problem for the young, whose lives are documented more thoroughly than ever, but for older folks who haven’t had this need reconstructing all this can be a pain. Even more so if they’ve moved around a lot in their lives, necessitating a birth certificate from this state, marriage from that, other documentation from yet another… > [@](#): > > If you don’t want to use it in that manner, then you don’t need to get the RealID. Just tell your state you don’t want a RealID and get the license without the star. In my state, people getting their first license do NOT have the option to forego RealID. In my state, people moving in from out of state do NOT have the option to forego RealID. They’re really pushing this thing - when I went to get my license renewed _I was not told that I could opt out_, I was told I HAD TO DO THIS. Which is, yes, against the rules but they’re giving that out at the BMV, which they shouldn’t be doing. > [@puzzlegal](#): > > Who the hell keeps a marriage license around? I’ve never had a physical copy of that. I signed it at the wedding, gave it to the officiant (who presumably filled it with the town) and went off on my honey moon. That’s the last time i touched it. I kept mine - but as I said, the state of Indiana wouldn’t accept it. I had to get _another_ copy, conforming to “modern” standards. I am told this is happening to pretty much anyone married more than 20-25 years, _especially_ if they were married outside the state. > [@Bear\_Nenno](#): > > Look man, I’m not saying that a utility bill should be the end all and be all of address confirmation. Yes, there should be options available for people who don’t have bills. I’m not sure what options _are_ available (certainly, some methods must be available). There are not options for people living in Indiana. You can, of course, switch your utility bills from on-line to paper temporarily… but at least some companies will charge you an additional fee for doing do. > [@Bear\_Nenno](#): > > I’m willing to bet the solution is as simple as the ones in New York. It’s a Federal Act, so I’d expect the rules to be similar across all states. I think you are all making this simple requirement out to be some impossible and unreasonable process. Why would, say, Indiana implement this in exactly the same way as New York? Different states are different states, and some are being bigger asshats about this than others. Seems to me that the states are being asked to verify things, but how strict they are about what documents are acceptable is what varies. > [@Bear\_Nenno](#): > > Did anyone change their name as a result of the marriage? What document was used to effect that change? This may blow your mind, but I have discovered the hard way that different states approached this differently. Not all states required you to document the name change - you just filled out your marriage certificate, then you started using your married name afterwards. This is even worse for the divorced - used to be a copy of the divorce decree used to be sufficient for a woman to go back to using her maiden name. Nope, not any more - the state of Indiana is requiring a legal name change via court and judge. So a bunch of women have gone to get their license renewed and been told nope, you have to use your married name, doesn’t matter you haven’t used it in decades, it’s your name. Have to get all your other stuff changed or pay to go in front of a judge and pay hundreds of dollars in fees to get this sorted out? Too bad, sucks to be you. Og knows what happens to women who married, divorced, remarried… glad I don’t have to sort out THAT mess! This is causing no end of problems here in Indiana, where people (mostly women, but a few men as well) are having their names “corrected” by the RealID process. I was also told by a BMV supervisor that there has been an issue with people who get their birth certificates and find out the name they were told all their life was their name is not, in fact, their name. Sometimes the family swapped around the first and middle names and never made it official, but all the person’s documentation in life was in the “wrong” order of names, sometimes it was informal adoptions were birth certificate/name wasn’t changed, all sorts of variations. These people are _really_ screwed because NONE of their documentation matches their birth certificate. They’re told to go in front of a judge and get a legal name change. Oh, and that BMV supervisor? She told me she herself was caught in all this - apparently when she got divorced and went back to her maiden name it wasn’t official enough. She’s had to go in front of a judge and get her name “changed” to what’s she’s been using as her legal name for the past 20 years. This happened to me. My name got “corrected” in this process (and when I tried to pull out halfway through all this mess I was told nope, you can’t do that - you started this process you can’t a license _at all_ now unless it’s a RealID) I am almost finished with straightening out the problem, but I am in the absolutely _ludicrous_ situation that my state-issued RealID driver’s license shows a different name than my _Federally_ issued pilot’s license. In other words, the ID that allows me into the airport is now different than the ID that allows me to fly an airplane. \*\* _This is stupid_\*\* > [@Bear\_Nenno](#): > > So do I. I’m not sure what your point is. Your online bank still has your address, and you can log into your account and print off something from the bank with your address on it. A statement, perhaps? No, you can’t - the state of Indiana will not accept that. It has to be issued by the bank and _mailed_ to you as a physical document. > [@Bear\_Nenno](#): > > I think you are all making this simple requirement out to be some impossible and unreasonable process. Not impossible, but it annoying at best and _extremely_ inconvenient for some people. In general, the older you are the more you have to chase about reconstructing your life. Getting most of these documents require some sort of fee to get copies or to update, or postage, and certainly it all requires time. You’re supposed to update your driver’s license within 30 days of moving to Indiana. But you must have utility bill(s), bank statement(s), and so on _mailed_ to you at your new address to do that… and that makes it virtually impossible for anyone to actually get this done within 30 days. Remember, if you’re moving _into_ the state you don’t have a choice, you MUST get a RealID license. These regulations in fact make it _impossible_ for many to comply with the law. And that is goddamned stupid. Does this affect everyone? Of course not - some people are going to sail through all this with no problem. Have a passport in whatever name you’ve been using as your legal name? Doesn’t matter, then, if you’ve been divorced/married/divorced/your parent’s swapped your first and middle names around/whatever - what’s on the passport is your name. So someone who first got a passport 30 or 40 years ago may not have a name issue even if otherwise their name is “wrong”. But it really does affect a subset of the population, with the majority of those being affected being women. Since the rules were (I presume) made by men it probably didn’t occur to them it would be a problem and they probably don’t care that it is. --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tsa-require-your-u-s-drivers-license-to-have-a-star-to-fly-in-2020/834496)._