House Transportation Committee approves bill to mark noncitizen status on Wyoming driver licenses

The House Transportation Committee voted 5-4 to approve Senate File 33, which requires driver licenses and ID cards issued to noncitizen credential-holders to carry a clearly placed notation reading "not a U.S. citizen." The committee approved an amendment inserting the word "citizen" after "U.S." in two places of the engrossed bill.

Wyoming Department of Transportation officials told the committee the change is technically possible but involves production, design and vendor considerations. "No one in Wyoming gets a credential that is not lawfully allowed to be here," said Taylor Rosetti, deputy director for WYDOT, arguing the department already verifies lawful presence when issuing credentials. Rosetti said WYDOT and its vendor had identified a placement on the back lower-left of the card as the clearest location for the notation.

Misty Zimmerman, program manager for Wyoming driver services, described the license as a multilayer polycarbonate card with embedded personalization features and security layers. Zimmerman said changing substrate color or the card’s core design is a substantially larger project than updating personalization text and that WYDOT requested an implementation date of Jan. 1, 2026, to coincide with a broader modernization project and an anticipated vendor contract decision. "We would actually be a perfect time to get to that," Zimmerman said of the proposed effective date.

WYDOT provided the committee with counts and cost estimates: as of Nov. 20, 2024 the department reported 2,969 temporary-resident credentials and 5,962 permanent-resident (noncitizen) credentials out of approximately 485,000 total credentials. Zimmerman said a personalization-only change corresponds with a lower fiscal note, roughly $67,000; a full substrate redesign had earlier been estimated at about $239,000 and WYDOT noted other proposals had been projected "between a quarter and a little bit more of a million dollars."

Public testimony opposed the change. Gail Simmons of Civics 307 and Why Vote? urged the committee not to spend funds on a problem she said does not exist, noting same-day registration numbers statewide were small — 6,584 same-day registrants in the 2024 primary (about 2.9%) and 57 in the general (about 0.02%). "It serves no purpose," Simmons said.

Marissa Carpio of the Equality State Policy Center said instances of noncitizen voting in Wyoming are "virtually nonexistent," and that the change could send a negative message to recently naturalized voters. A state official identified only one prosecuted instance of noncitizen voting in recent history. "There has been only one instance of a prosecuted noncitizen voting in Wyoming to my knowledge," a staff member responding to committee questions said.

Committee members debated stronger design changes to make the card more visually distinct. Representative Wiley proposed an amendment to change card coloration (he suggested a bright fluorescent color) to make the designation more obvious; the motion received no second and was not considered. Representative Geringer moved, and a committee member seconded, the amendment inserting the word "citizen" after "U.S." on the cited lines; the committee approved that amendment by voice and later recorded the final roll-call vote on the bill as amended.

On the roll-call vote for Senate File 33 as amended, the committee recorded these votes: Representatives Banks, Geringer, McCann, Brown (absentee), and Vice Chair Tarver voted aye; Representatives Larson (absentee), Nicholas, Posey and Wiley voted no. The tally was 5 ayes and 4 noes and the bill passed out of committee. Chairman Tarver said he did not know who would carry the bill to the floor.

The committee closed testimony and adjourned after the vote; no floor sponsor was named during the hearing.