Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by Wowfunhappy 166 days ago
Why would a national ID require a constitutional amendment?
4 comments

It's debatable as to whether it's technically required or not, but "the Tenth Amendment, establishes that powers not granted to the federal government nor prohibited to the states are reserved for the states or the people. This means states have the authority to create and enforce their own laws as long as they do not conflict with federal laws."

https://www.americanbar.org/groups/science_technology/resour...

It would not, although a requirement to carry and provide it to authorities on demand may require a change to the fourth amendment.
here's what we have: a way to identify every almost every American by their face, identify almost every American by their name and birthdate, identify every American invasively (like via a blood draw), lots of documents at the national level that we can compel people to have for various activities that are practically required for living. we don't, narrowly, have a document, that you can force everyone to have, in a very peculiar interaction, where someone can be like, "you're going to jail unless you produce this document," and you're not driving, you're not crossing a border, you're not etc. etc.

so do we need a constitutional amendment? i guess if enough people perceive that we do.

10th amendment - issuing IDs is a power already claimed by the states
The Supreme Court can fix that right up anytime they want.
What?? The Supreme Court doesn't write the Constitution.
In the new world, the Supreme Court can change basically any policy or old decision and make up things not in the Constitution. One example is Trump's immunity that they created out of whole cloth and that was nowhere to be found. At the same time they invented a reason why Trump's attempted rebellion against the US did not violate the constitutional amendment that was designed to keep someone like that from running for president