Read some of the comments on this thread to see how this new law is impacting women:

http://www.topix.com/forum/city/orlando-fl/TH5D6U227542DLFI4

Dec 7, 2010 | Posted by: Moon News
Florida Women subjected to unreasonable driver license documentation

Full story: www.dmvflorida.org

Florida Women beware! The State of Florida DMV in its usual "intelligent" interpretation of ID requirements single out Woman, requiring them to produce additional identification that Men are not required to produce. First, let's see what kind of information that is required on the postcard form HSMV B71070 DC1050/55/100 PRW1 (REV 06/21/2010). This form briefly informs residents about their Driver License Renewal NEW requirements. It tells you when your license expires and what you need to do to renew it. It does say that you need to bring original or certified copies. Now let me ask you if you consider that Women are victims of over zealousness, paranoia, or just being discriminated against? Read on for an example here in Florida.

There is a long list of comments I could make about FL, but suffice to say:

IMO, you would be wise to find somewhere else to vacation and spend your vacation dollars; find somewhere else to live.

(I predict: You'll be glad you did.)

Handmaiden

Winter Park, FL

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#21
Mar 16, 2012

I know these posts are old, but just came up against this myself. Like others, I am divorced but needed my marriage certificate to prove I'm "me." How ironic is it that as a proof of being "me" to get my marriage certificate I used my driver's license. Once I get my marriage certificate, I can renew said driver's license. What imbecile came up with this one? Regardless of what identification I (or anyone) provide to the DMV, the person behind the desk cannot make a 100% determination of who I am. This is just another example of some idiot bureaucrat wasting our time and money. Or was it something more evil to limit women's ability to get a driver's license and what that could mean to her livelihood?

Dian

Lakeland, FL

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#18
Jul 29, 2011

Let us reason together.
It is not fair to put more stress on a woman then she already has .
After all, she has gone through childbirth pain and stress of raising children ,and mostly on her own...gone through a bad marriage or more because HE didn't know what he wanted..that being if he wanted to be married .(hello,too late )
Now they are making women go through more stress having to get all the paperwork, all the marriage and divorce licenses,more paper trails from the time she was born up until she is able to get her drivers license renewed here in Florida because of some man made law that stinks to high haven. Is this discrimination against all women? YES INDEED ! It needs to stop.

and it's a royal pain. When you change your name getting married, it's no problem. When you divorce and change your name back, it's a nightmare.

In other words: at some point you got married -- and you're a woman. That means: your name changed at some point in your past, so now : you now must produce a MARRIAGE CERTIFICATE to get a license renewal in your married name -- EVEN IF YOU ALREADY HAVE A LICENSE IN YOUR MARRIED NAME.

What is the rationale for that?

Why else would they put an undue burden on women to renew their licenses that men don't have to go through? Jane Crow strikes again.

Never change your name.

wrong spot

I've been telling women for years not to change their name when they get married. It's much easier that way.

I'm under the impression that when women do choose to change their last name at marriage, many states require a bunch of documentation before they'll issue a new DL. Used to be, all you had to do was tell them, and it was okay.

This new law is RETRO ACTIVE FOR ANY WOMAN. You could be 70 years old and lived in FL all your life, and been married at age 20;
now, FL says: you must get your marriage certificate to FL Dept of Motor Vehicles to renew your license.

70 years old and got married at 20. And I'm not being sarcastic at all. The very vast majority of women do change their surname at marriage, and even though I personally didn't do that, and personally consider it a very strange thing to do, I recognize that my opinion is the odd one.

Makes me wonder how people in the witness protection program manage.

I agree with the sentiment that this is a totally outrageous thing to require. It's part and parcel of the whole war on women: women can't be trusted to make decisions about their body, women can't even be trusted that they have the last name they say they have.

She's already made that decision. She's keeping the name she's had for 27 years.

When I got my DL, three years ago, I had to jump thru hoops because I changed my name....married....my military ID and passport was not enough. This is VA. I was so pissed.

She's keeping her name. She said the kids, "If there are any," will deal with hyphens or whatever

Boy was I mistaken about that.

Suddenly I'm not in the mood to go to Florida.

My daughter was wanting to visit the Harry Potter theme park but she may just have to wait until they put a Harry Potter theme park in at Disney Land to see that.

Good point you made. Because in FL: you need photo ID in FL to vote.

Photo ID laws, coupled with bullshit rules that make it harder for a woman to get an ID, smacks of a 19th Amendment violation.

NOW needs to be on this.

There are so many times NOW and the ACLU need to be on something in FL.
I think they just don't have the staff or the funds or something. Because this law happened in 2010 and it was
an outrage then as now.

Or it may be a case of selective enforcement, which is harder to prove and harder to deal with. The DMV website is just vague enough that it looks like it could be a selective enforcement issue.

It would be useful if there was some corroboration besides three single paragraph accounts over a year old on a site only slightly more reliable than YouTube comments. (Even reddit didn't produce anything, and reddit has a thread on almost everything.) We need someone in FL who a) has access to her own records, b) has been married and divorced and changed her name at least once, c) is coming up for renewal and has 2-3 months' lead time, d) has spare time she doesn't mind spending at the DMV to do this twice or three times, and e) has access to a digital voice recorder she can keep in a pocket and f) is willing to go in the first time with just the minimum required documents that men need. I'd totally do it, but I'm not in Florida, and still have the name that's on my birth certificate.

However... Here's NOW's twitter: @NationalNOW. It's worth pointing them at the thread with something eye catching like

FL denying women necessary voter ID

(I can attest that if Colorado tried something similar, I would not notice until someone else pinged me, because I a) was too lazy to stand in line/make calls to/write letters to DMV/SS/Credit bureaus/credit card companies/everywhere and b) remain firmly convinced that after several decades with one name and title, there was no reason whatsoever to change either. I continued to use Miss or Ms (I've always used them interchangeably) until I became Doctor. If this was a procedural change, it actually would be easy to miss.)

What surprises me is that no female lawyer has yet spoken out about this experience.

BTW, in addition to being a burden not imposed on men (even if a man changed his name),
and in addition to having no real purpose (as you can already have a FL license in your married name - but now you have to
provide all certified documents relating to your name change for each time you married), and in addition to being an impediment
to voting (by delaying the time you spend to get your required voter ID, your license), and in addition to being a way to further humiliate a woman who is falsely arrested for DUI or anything else, you have to remember two things:

(1) Now, it costs money ($20 at least) to get a certified copy of your document that shows your name changed as the FL Dept of Motor Vehicles is requiring a certified original to be provided to them for each time in the past you changed your name; and

(2) ALL such money is being paid to "vital records" or whatever company it is that is providing these certified copies (the online company is named in the comments on that thread).

Now, who owns this online vital records company? I would like to know. Because with laws like this, they are raking in the money.

Furthermore - this is an enormous violation of privacy. What business is it of FL to determine what your name was before you legally changed your name? Especially if you legally changed your name 10, 20, 30 years ago and you already have a FL driver's license in your new legal name?

THis is a total outrage for so many reasons. And, again, no - it is NOT selective enforcement. Why no female lawyers have attempted to overturn this law yet I do not know. Maybe because: they are not changing their names upon marriage.

Read more here about this 2010 law applying to women in FL:

http://www.gathergoget.com/checklist/checklist.aspx
!Name Change

If you have ever legally changed your name by marriage or court order, you must submit the original or a certified copy of your marriage certificate or court order. No photocopies will be accepted unless certified by the issuing authority. For multiple name changes, you must show a document trail linking your current name to your chosen proof of identity. Marriage licenses must be from a governmental agency. Church issued licenses cannot be accepted.

If presenting a valid U.S. Passport and the name on your passport is your current name, you are not required to present additional name change documents.

Use our Name Change Wizard to create a checklist of additional documents.

So, it may be: women lawyers in FL are using their US passports to avoid having to re-create this document trail -- but, not every woman in FL, especially the elderly and the young, have a US passport.

This is just pure BS on the Florida Legislature's part.... and any woman legislator who agrees/agreed with this needs her freaking head examined.

So far, I've had to make requests for 4 marriage licenses and 4 divorce decrees after being told that I HAD TO HAVE THEM just to renew a license in a name I've gone by for 30 years!!!! Why would any woman after a nasty divorce want to keep around reminders... I had a big bonfire after every divorce thinking I'd never have to look, much less NEED, those stupid papers again...

I'm going to see if any attorney will work to sue the crap out of the DMV on this or just on general principles. NO woman should have to put up with this one way thinking. Men should have to do it every time they renew any kind of license, including their fishing, hunting license.

Everyone else is meant to live at their whims.

It is another way to suppress voting. DUI has nothing to do with it.
Poor and older people are much less likely to have hung on to old documentation. Or to have had much documentation in the first place.
For a teenager getting a first official photo ID - if they cannot find their social security card, and have not had a job, it takes some talking to get the ID - they need a picture ID in order to get a replacement SS card, and an SS card or W-2 or whatever in order to get the Florida ID. Male or female.

It took me one phone call to get a copy of my marriage certificate from another state. That other state is Pennsylvania. I was born there, but would never move back - the politicians in charge are corrupt. But I wouldn't say fuck Pennsylvania and Pennsylvanians, that's a stupid cheap generality. Not so easy to just move, in these times, and isn't it better to stay and vote democratic? And there are many red states, and no guarantee that a blue state will remain blue these days, what with gerrymandering.

So very many people seem disappointed that there have been no riots. Sorry.

I have to also provide my birth certificate, social security card AND marriage certificate to obtain a United States passport or any other form of official Identification. I keep all that documentation in a safe place BUT I was born in Virginia, I'm Caucasian and both of my marriages occurred to American men on American soil.

My husband and I moved to Florida in 1998 and we went together to get Florida driver's licenses. He had to bring a utility bill/deed (proof of address) and his birth certificate/Social Security Card. In 1998, I had to bring the exact same thing, EXCEPT I also needed to bring my marriage certificate to show that the name on my birth certificate was really mine. Because I took back my maiden name upon my divorce from my first husband, that is all the proof I've ever needed because the marriage certificate has the name from my birth certificate on it.

I would have run into the same issue in 1998 that I run into today if I had married my husband under my first married name. No one just takes your word for it if you say that the Jane Doe on the birth certificate is the Jane Black on the marriage certificate to John Smith. You need to prove it.

We had to get our licenses renewed under the "current laws" in Florida and I had to bring exactly the same documentation that I did in 1998. Birth certificate, proof of address, social security card and marriage certificate. In both 1998 and post-2010 laws, I would have needed my first marriage license and divorce decree if I had not changed my name back. The difference is that I would have to go in person to renew my license (normally, you just renew it online) so that I could get a new picture taken.

Since women have been changing their names forever in America on marriage, this has been an extra piece of documentation we've had to bring and I find it hard to believe that a 70 year old White American woman would not have her marriage certificate to prove that her married name is really her name.

This isn't a war on women - it's a war on immigrants. Immigrants are the ones that will end up having a hard time getting all this documentation from their home countries (especially the large Haitian community down here - fires, earthquakes, riots, mudslides, hurricanes, etc have caused much of this documentation to be destroyed). This law was set up to make sure that the least number of immigrants possible can get a driver's license (since "illegal" immigrants are no longer permitted to get driver's licenses in Florida).

It's an invasion of ALL of our privacy... that is my point.

Last edited Sun Jul 14, 2013, 03:31 PM - Edit history (1)

I'm not saying that the new laws aren't egregious invasions of privacy or that they aren't targeting immigrants.

All I'm saying is that it's not just bad for women... it's not just targeted against women.

never change her last name. Given the high incidence of divorce in this country I don't know why anyone would want to change their last name anyway. It is medieval that women are even expected to take a husband's name anyway.

Just out of curiosity, if a woman moves to Florida, short of pulling full credit bureau reports (or criminal background checks), how will the State of Florida know how many names a person has had?

That keeps your maiden name as your legal name, and avoids the problem with name changes. It also allows you to be known socially as Mrs. So-and-so.

socially by it.

If a husband has a hissy fit because his wife will not take "HIS" name then he has other issues.

Just pointing out that this is a bad idea. They don't have to, since they can still use the new husband's last name socially, without doing the legal changes.

Not changing it is easy. You just don't change it. My wife, along with many other women, don't bother with that. By keeping the name you were born with, there's no hassle at all with things like driver's licenses, Social Security, passports or any such thing. Personally, I've never understood why women are expected to change their names in the first place.

My wife has the same name she had when I met her. Why should she change it?

Try replacing your lost social security card if you have been married/divorced......you even have to provide a copy of the certified, stamped divorce decree, AND a certified copy of your marriage license along with the certified copy of your birth certificate.

You do realize that's 3 certified (COSTLY) pieces of paper.

since women are far more likely to vote as Dems.

If you do that, it won't just be assholes that get hurt. It will be people who wanted Trayvon to get justice, that includes most black people.

Do you really think Trayvon would want his death to end up hurting black families in Florida?

Better to move there and vote, or protest there against unjust laws.