Undocumented immigrant license ban advances amid moral, constitutional questions

A House panel advanced a bill to invalidate driver’s licenses other states issue to undocumented immigrants amid questions about its enforceability and moral caution from a representative of the Catholic Diocese. 

The House Corporations, Elections and Political Subdivisions Committee, which is stacked with Freedom Caucus members, did not make any changes to the bill. It will now pass to the House floor, where the caucus has a voting majority and has been resisting changes to bills that are core pieces of its “five and dime” platform. 

Rep. Pepper Ottman’s House Bill 116, “Driver’s licenses-unauthorized alien restrictions,” is the second plank of that plan. It is also one of a suite of bills aimed at making Wyoming unwelcoming to undocumented immigrants.

On Friday, a Wyoming Highway Patrol officer noted that the bill would invalidate driver’s licenses from two of the state’s principal neighbors — Colorado and Utah — issue to undocumented immigrants. Lt. Colonel Karl Germain also noted that it could be difficult for troopers to identify what driver’s licenses the bill invalidated, as some states may not clearly mark a license issued to an undocumented immigrant as different from that issued to legal immigrants. 

Such a concern appears to have blunted the impact of a similar legislative effort in Florida, which wound up invalidating licenses for undocumented immigrants from just two states, a far cry from the 19 states Ottman, a Republican from Riverton, is aiming for. 

Others who testified Friday raised moral, not practical, concerns. 

Lawmakers who have proclaimed themselves fiercely pro-life when it comes to abortion should not lose that ideal in the fervor to legislate against undocumented immigrants, the Catholic Church’s legislative liaison in Wyoming, Deacon Mike Leman, cautioned Friday.

“Human dignity is not assigned by government,” Leman told lawmakers. “A just government merely protects what is already there. And that’s true of the pre-born. It’s also true of people coming into our country.”

Leman added that his church supports federal reform of a broken immigration system, but he worried about how lawmakers would address the problem in his home state in the meantime. 

“Driving is a privilege, it’s not a human right,” he said as swirling snow and dangerously low temperatures began to envelop Cheyenne. “But as a Wyomingite … I think about how critical driving is to survival, especially on a weekend like we’re starting to experience, and I’m just a little bit concerned about what this might do to families that are already here.” 

Lawmakers did not ask Leman any questions. They also did not engage with ACLU Advocacy Director Antonio Serrano, who called the bill both unconstitutional and dangerous for Wyoming’s vitality. “This bill is not making our state any safer or any better, and all it does is send a clear signal that our state is becoming anti-immigrant,” Serrano said. 

The bill could run afoul of the U.S. Constitution’s Full Faith and Credit Clause, in which states are supposed to recognize the legal records issued by other states, Rosslyn Read, legal director of the Teton County-based Wyoming Immigrant Advocacy Project, previously told WyoFile.

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One subject that did not come up in Friday’s testimony was how a similar measure Florida passed in 2023 played out. That bill was more tightly worded than Ottman’s. It only invalidated licenses issued “exclusively” to undocumented immigrants, avoiding some of the potential confusion described by Germain. Florida initially applied the law to five states, but the list was eventually whittled down to just two — Connecticut and Delaware — after the other three states provided evidence that exempted them from the law. 

Worries about interstate commerce caused Florida to take a more cautious approach than the Wyoming Legislature is showing so far, Adriana Rivera, a spokesperson for the Florida Immigrant Coalition, told WyoFile. Her organization opposed the measure. The fact that the bill ultimately ended up invalidating just two states’ licenses showed that it was about ideology more than substance, she said. 

“This was just more of politicians politicking but not really delving into the substance of the policies they are dropping,” Rivera said. 

In a sign of concern over the law’s impact to travel and tourism, Florida Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles Department notes on its website that “Visitors from Connecticut and Delaware are welcome in Florida and will not be pulled over simply for having out-of-state plates.”  

Ottman has rejected skepticism of the bill’s legality. The Constitution “does not require Wyoming to aid and abet liberal states who seek to flout federal immigration law,” she wrote to WyoFile.

Asked about Florida’s law, she wrote that “any effort, no matter how small, to achieve immigration accountability is worth it.”

The committee voted eight to one to pass the bill, with only Jackson Democrat Rep. Mike Yin voting against it.