Houston Could Get Municipal ID

HOUSTON, TX — This could get complicated. Mayor Sylvester Turner is thinking about maybe asking city council if they might be interested in starting up a municipal ID program.

Programs where a city government issues an ID card to residents are very popular in California and in New Jersey, but they are almost unheard of in the land of sweet tea and fiddle music.

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If Houston were to go through with this, it would be not only be a major undertaking — essentially building a whole new city department from scratch — but one that would almost certainly put the city in the middle of some major legal fights.

Questions about who would accept the card and for what purposes immediately spring to mind. Would bars or restaurants be able to accept a city ID in lieu of a state issued driver's license? Could a municipal ID be used used to vote? Would it work as an alternative form of ID for registering children for school?

The existence of the card also raises some fundamental questions that cut to the core of the identity debates that have been roiling the country for the last few years. What type of identity should be recognized with the card? Should a transgender person be able to get a card that shows their preferred gender? How will people applying for the card prove they are who say they are?

This card also raises some very fundamental questions about the relation of the government to the governed. For many people a valid ID card is a statement of arrival, whether arrival into a physical space like a new country or arrival into a socially constructed space like teen years or adulthood.

And for some people whose journeys took them to a different place on the gender continuum, the photo on their ID card can be an incredibly difficult reminder that the state doesn't recognize their identity. The act of having to show a photo that doesn't reflect who you are for whatever reason — to verify age, to verify residence — can be dehumanizing.

This leads to questions of should a government have the ability to dictate how people are perceived, by themselves and others. It also leads broader ethical concerns about using the very real threat of imprisonment for failing to carry documents that not only reinforce the biological basis for identity but also can lead directly to open acts of bigotry.

But at an even more fundamental level the card raises a question about whether a city in Texas has the legal authority to issue its own form of identification, or is that a power solely reserved for the state and federal government?

If Turner and city council go through with this, the obvious question becomes what happens when the state legislature gets back in session next year? It didn't take the lege long to overturn municipal fracking and plastic bag bans, it probably will take even less time for them to prevent cities from issuing IDs.

The fact that Turner and the city council are even considering issuing identification cards, instead of trying to work with state agencies to resolve the issues that prevent people from getting identification cards, shows just how far apart urban and rural Texas have become.