Will coronavirus cause Feds to postpone California’s REAL ID deadline?

With state and local officials curtailing, even prohibiting crowds at state capitols, sports groups planning fan-less games and golf tournaments, even cancelling the remainder of their seasons, how can California DMV continue to serve nearly 100,000 people daily at field offices statewide as they did last Monday?

Granted those massive DMV crowds are the direct result of the state’s until recently pathetic response to the 2005 federal REAL ID law which stipulates that all state drivers licenses must be granted under new, enhanced identity authentication procedures by October 2020. Without REAL ID approved licenses you’ll be unable to enter federal buildings and most significantly get passed TSA security at airports.

8 million left to go and only seven months

Even with the Newsom administration’s admirable reforms at DMV last year, with some 8 million California residents still expected to have to visit field offices for the new license and less than seven months before the October 1, 2020 deadline, no one anticipates that happening. Now with authorities restricting crowds as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, and encouraging school closings, quarantines, telework and other isolation alternatives, how can those officials allow these crowds at DMV?

Short answer. They can’t.

Always looking on the bright side, look for the coronavirus to pull the state DMV out of the REAL ID fire. Newsom will have escaped a big hit.

They say it’s better to be lucky than good.

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