Real ID Act

REAL ID Act

Other short titles	Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Act for Defense, the Global War on Terror, and Tsunami Relief, 2005 Reaffirmation of State Regulation of Resident and Nonresident Hunting and Fishing Act of 2005 Save Our Small and Seasonal Businesses Act of 2005
Long title	An Act to establish and rapidly implement regulations for State driver's license and identification document security standards, to prevent terrorists from abusing the asylum laws of the United States, to unify terrorism-related grounds for inadmissibility and removal, and to ensure expeditious construction of the San Diego border fence.
Nicknames	REAL ID Act of 2005
Enacted by	the 109th United States Congress
Effective	May 11, 2008 (original); January 20, 2014 (current)
Citations
Public law	109-13
Statutes at Large	119 Stat. 302
Codification
Titles amended	8 U.S.C.: Aliens and Nationality
U.S.C. sections amended	8 U.S.C. ch. 12, subch. I § 1101 et seq.
Legislative history
Introduced in the House as H.R. 418 by Jim Sensenbrenner (R–WI) on January 26, 2005 Committee consideration by House Judiciary, House Homeland Security, House Government Reform, Senate Judiciary Passed the House on February 10, 2005 (261–161 Roll call vote 031, via Clerk.House.gov) Passed the Senate on April 21, 2005 (99–0 Roll call vote 109, via Senate.gov, in lieu of H.R. 1268) Reported by the joint conference committee on May 3, 2005; agreed to by the House on May 5, 2005 (368–58 Roll call vote 161, via Clerk.House.gov, in lieu of H.R. 1268) and by the Senate on May 10, 2005 (100–0 Roll call vote 117, via Senate.gov, in lieu of H.R. 1268) Signed into law by President George W. Bush on May 11, 2005

The REAL ID Act of 2005, Pub.L. 109–13, 119 Stat. 302, enacted May 11, 2005, is an Act of Congress that modifies U.S. federal law pertaining to security, authentication, and issuance procedures standards for the state driver's licenses and identity documents, as well as various immigration issues pertaining to terrorism.

The law sets forth requirements for state driver's licenses and ID cards to be accepted by the federal government for "official purposes", as defined by the Secretary of the United States Department of Homeland Security. The Secretary of Homeland Security has currently defined "official purposes" as boarding commercially operated airline flights and entering federal buildings and nuclear power plants, although the law gives the Secretary the unlimited authority to require a "federal identification" for any other purposes.

The REAL ID Act implements the following:

On December 20, 2013, the Department of Homeland Security announced that implementation of Phase 1 would begin on January 20, 2014, which followed a yearlong period of "deferred enforcement". There are four planned phases, three of which apply to areas that affect relatively few U.S. citizens—e.g., DHS headquarters, nuclear power plants, and restricted and semi-restricted federal facilities. The timeline for Phase 4, which applies to boarding federally regulated commercial aircraft, will be determined after DHS conducts an evaluation of how the first three phases were implemented. To "ensure that the public has ample advanced [sic] notice", DHS says that Phase 4 will not be implemented before January 1, 2016. On January 8, 2016, DHS issued a revised implementation schedule for Phase 4, stating that starting January 22, 2018 "passengers with a driver’s license issued by a state that is still not compliant with the REAL ID Act (and has not been granted an extension) will need to show an alternative form of acceptable identification for domestic air travel to board their flight". Starting October 1, 2020 "every air traveler will need a REAL ID-compliant license, or another acceptable form of identification, for domestic air travel." As of March 2017, 26 states and territories have been certified as sufficiently compliant or making sufficient progress toward compliance, 26 have been granted extensions, and 4 have not been certified as sufficiently compliant or received extensions.

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