Today a Denver judge stayed until Wednesday an injunction that voided the state’s rule requiring driver’s license and ID card applicants to provide two forms of identification.
The ruling by Denver Chief District Judge Larry Naves striking the two-document rule caused the state to suspend the processing of new driver’s license applications today.
Whether state offices would be open Monday for new applicants was unclear today, though lawyers who won the injunction said Colorado could continue its two-record process until Wednesday.
“If they choose to do that, they would not be in contempt,” attorney Sean Connelly said.
Offices have been renewing licenses today, but refusing requests to issue new ones.
The state asked for a stay because the order posed “a significant administrative dilemma and burden on (the Colorado Department of) Revenue,” assistant attorney general Carolyn Lievers wrote in her request.
Lievers said the state’s operation is too big to change procedures “on such short notice” and that staff would require training on how to process license and ID card applications.
Lievers said the state planned to appeal Naves decision to the Colorado Court of Appeals.
Lawyers who won the stay said the state’s reaction was “hysterical.”
“Defendants’ reaction to the pending preliminary injunction order has been alarmist and hysterical,” attorney Sean Connelly wrote in a brief opposing the stay.
The state gained some ground when Naves allowed the state 30 days to begin issuing writing denials to anyone refused a license because of improper identity documentation.
Applicants are required to prove their identity, age and legal presence in U.S. in order to get a license or ID card.
A group of individuals who had difficulty getting their IDs, many of them homeless, sued the state Division of Motor Vehicles saying the two-document rule was arbitrary and violated the Colorado Administrative Procedures Act, which requires a public hearing before a rule can be implemented.
Revenue Director M. Michael Cooke ordered license offices not to process new applications until they received guidance from Naves on how to do that without violating his order.
