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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   21953 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?

You don't need a driver's license to vote. Here is the list of acceptable voter ids: https://www.sos.alabama.gov/alabama-votes/voter/voter-id So as long as any of these would honor a common law name, the state potentially has a way out.

But on the other hand, I'm not even sure this sort of catch-22 would hold up in court. The court says that your common law name should be honored, but that doesn't mean that the state has to give you an id or anything else if you don't bring the prerequisite documents. A person asking for an ID under his birth name would have trouble too if he couldn't produce proof of it. So I could see potentially that the court upholds that "we agree that's your name, but you still need docs proving it to get an id or vote"

My issue here isn't about voter registration, though; it's about updating the name on your Driver's License.

Nothing in the Alabama v. Taylor court opinion that I could see relied on the fact that Taylor's issue happened to be the voter registration department and not the department of motor vehicles; the issue was the State refusing to accept a common law name change as valid per se.

court says that your common law name should be honored, but that doesn't mean that the state has to give you an id or anything else if you don't bring the prerequisite documents … So I could see potentially that the court upholds that "we agree that's your name, but you still need docs proving it to get an id or vote"

If the requirement to “bring the prerequisite documents” — when the requested documents expand way beyond what's actually required to show common use — was already deemed illegal in the latter case (to vote), since that policy infringed on established law, why would it be different for the former (to get an id)?

I suppose I have a tendency to imagine worst case scenarios, but if the DMV or wherever just accepted "Oh hi, yeah I know my birth cert says my name is Tom Smith but everybody knows me as Joey Browne - 'Joey' is my second name and 'Browne' is my mom's name which I took after she divorced my dad - so can I get new ID in my common law name?" and then it turns out oops, Joey Browne is Tom's cousin and Tom is using his name so he can avoid being held responsible for that car accident he caused... yeah, it'd be a mess.

It's not like we don't already have people giving fake names and addresses to police, or such a thing as identity theft. Or in my own country, a sub-population where traditionally people of different generations often have the same name (e.g. John Murphy grandfather, John Murphy son, John Murphy grandson and of course all the other cousins called John Murphy after grandfather) without the American frills of "Snr, Jr, III, IV etc." and not wholly surprisingly, often some of these people rely on the confusion about "so it was John Murphy of Windy Gap Road, but which John Murphy?" when the cops come calling or try to investigate crimes.

So I would tend to err on the side of "sure, everyone calls you Joey Browne, but your official paperwork says you're Tom Smith, please come back with something official to show that you're known as Joey Browne".

I have a Chesterton's Fence feeling about it:

Common Law actually seems remarkably simple to change your name, and from scratch I'd probably make it harder.

But why do we want to surrender a freedom we currently have to the government?

But why do we want to surrender a freedom we currently have to the government?

Well, voting is directly implicated, and that is your "freedom" to restrict other people's freedoms. So it isn't a black/white sort of question.

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