The governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, recently signed the HB 991 law -known as the Florida SAVE Act - which mandates that the legal status of the holder be included on all new, renewed, or replaced driver's licenses and identification cards starting January 1, 2027.
The measure was enacted in The Villages as part of an electoral reform legislative package approved by the state Legislature with 27 votes to 12 in the Senate and 77 to 28 in the House, both controlled by Republicans.
Under the new regulation, documents issued from that date will indicate whether the holder is a U.S. citizen or another type of legal resident in the country
Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles will share citizenship data weekly with the Department of State to cross-reference it with voter registration records.
Change is neither retroactive nor immediate.
Holders of valid licenses are not required to apply for new documents, as the current ones will remain valid until their expiration date.
The implementation will be gradual: only when drivers process renewals, replacements, or initial issuances starting January 1, 2027, will the new document include the legal status indicator.
If a person becomes a naturalized citizen, they will be able to update their license for free to reflect their new status.
The tax collector of Miami-Dade, Dariel Fernández, issued a statement describing the law as a comprehensive measure that strengthens verification processes, enhances data coordination, and modernizes the management of identification and eligibility throughout Florida.
The official pointed out that his office is at the center of many of these processes and assured that he is proactively assessing the implementation to ensure a smooth transition for residents.
The law goes beyond driver's licenses.
It also requires proof of citizenship —passport or birth certificate— to register to vote, eliminates student IDs as a valid form of identification at the polls, and mandates that all voting be conducted on paper.
DeSantis defended the exclusion of university IDs: "A student ID does not mean you are a resident of the state of Florida. It means you are studying. You need to have valid identification that proves you are a resident."
The official justification for the law is based on a report from January 2026 by the Florida Office of Election Crimes and Security, which identified just 198 "likely non-citizens" who registered illegally and/or voted in Florida from a voter roll of over 13 million.
Of those cases, 170 were referred to authorities for investigation and 28 to the Department of Elections for list maintenance.
Minutes after the signing, a coalition including the League of Women Voters of Florida, Florida Rising Together, the Florida Immigrant Coalition, and Common Cause filed a federal lawsuit in the Southern District of Florida, claiming that the citizenship proof requirements violate the First and Fourteenth Amendments of the Constitution.
The Elias Law Group filed a second lawsuit on behalf of the NAACP of Florida and the Florida Alliance of Retired Americans in the Northern District. Abha Khanna from the Elias Law Group described the law as one of the worst voter suppression laws in modern American history.
Jonathan Topaz, attorney for the ACLU Voting Rights Project, warned that the regulation targets Florida's most vulnerable voters: older Black voters who grew up in the segregated South, naturalized citizens, transgender individuals, low-income voters, and voters with disabilities.
DeSantis, for his part, anticipated the judicial outcome: "I am suing them, they go to a liberal judge, the liberal judge rules in their favor. Then we appeal and win. That is probably what will happen here."
More than 90% of Florida residents already have identification that complies with the REAL ID system - in January 2026, 20.6 million Floridians had compliant licenses and 872,408 did not - a fact that supporters of the law use to argue that most of the population will not be affected by the new requirements.
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