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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   21748 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 5, 2025

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Alabama Code § 32-6-13 states:

The Director of Public Safety, with the approval of the Governor, shall establish and promulgate reasonable rules and regulations not in conflict with the laws of this state concerning … the enforcement of the provisions of [Alabama Code Chapter 6, Article 1: Drivers’ Licenses] [which includes Alabama Code § 32-6-4, on issuing driver's licenses].

The Alabama supreme court has held time and time again, most recently in State of Alabama v. Catherine Taylor, et. al., that one consequence of Alabama Code § 1-3-1 is the complete efficacy and legitimacy of so-called “common law” name changes (name changes done neither by a court action nor by any specific statutory process) in the eyes of the State:

The order entered by the trial court permanently restrained the State from refusing to allow plaintiffs … from registering to vote “under the names by which they have chosen to be known and have used subsequent to this proceeding.” … We hold that the trial court did not err.

… “Where it is not done for a fraudulent purpose and in the absence of statutory restriction, one may lawfully change his name without resort to legal proceedings, and for all purposes the name thus assumed will constitute his legal name just as much as if he had borne it from birth.”

We are not aware of any statutory restriction which requires that married women not be permitted to register to vote, if otherwise qualified, under the names by which they have chosen to be known and have used; provided, of course, it is not done for a fraudulent purpose.

… in view of the fact that the common law regarding "names" has not been altered by the legislature as far as we know, we adopt the common law of England in resolving this dispute.

… While the State suggests that allowing married women to register in their maiden surnames will create confusion, we believe that the legitimate interests of the State in preventing fraud in the election process can be satisfied without undue cost or harm.

However, the Alabama DMV has this policy currently in force for changing the name printed on Alabama ID cards:

If you have changed your name, you must…present valid name change documents (e.g., marriage certificate, divorce decree, court order or legal name change document), along with proof that your name has been changed with the Social Security Administration.

Now, being required to not just “present valid name change documents”, but have a federal agency pre-approve them, seems to be a central case (I'd argue even more central than voter rolls that no-one even sees) of requiring a person to “resort to legal proceedings” to make “the name thus assumed…constitute his legal name…for [this] purpose”, which would make it a “rule [or] regulation…in conflict with the laws of this state” and thus an illegal requirement for the Director of Public Safety to impose on petitioners seeking to update their ID card to reflect a common law name change.

This is not just a procedural nitpick, but in practice actually a blocker for any person attempting the process, because even if you could somehow generate (and were willing to generate) a paper trail for your common law name change that'd pass ALEA/DMV muster as substantiating the change, the SSA will reject it anyway.

Before I go knocking on the door of the ACLU, or spending a million dollars on a private lawyer to sue the DMV to avoid spending $50 on a court-ordered name change: does this argument seem sound?

The "absence of statutory restriction" might also involve federal laws, since as far as I know state and federal have the same voter registration.

That the federal government does not have any statutory ban on putting common law adopted names on federal voter rolls should have no bearing on whether the state has any statutory restriction barring the department of motor vehicles from accepting certain (otherwise perfectly valid) name changes.

Are you saying you've found some state law that would warrant this refusal?

Surely the REAL ID Act and Alabama's decision to certify its driver's licenses to comply have a lot to say about names the DMV prints on licenses.

Even if some federal law prohibits REAL IDs from being issued in the legal name of a person whose name has been validly changed under common law—which I highly doubt—the DMV policy banning common law name changes is not restricted to STAR IDs (Alabama implemntation of REAL ID) anyway; it applies to all photo IDs.

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