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D.C.-issued drivers licenses have had a rough couple of weeks. There was the D.C. man who was prevented from buying booze in New Hampshire because he didn’t have a state-issued ID. And then a journalist was stopped by a Transportation Security Administration agent at airport security in Orlando, Fla., who said his D.C. ID wasn’t valid (and didn’t seem to realize D.C. was part of the United States).
So today, D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, the ranking Democrat on the Subcommittee on Highways and Transit in the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, says she’ll be meeting with top TSA officials to make sure they realize that D.C.-issued IDs are, in fact, valid U.S. IDs.
“We may not be a State and we may not have a vote in Congress, but we pay taxes to the United States,” Norton said in a press release. “At the very least, we should be recognized as part of the United States by our own Transportation Security Agency and by each and every State and locality.”
The incident in Florida last week wasn’t the first: In February, a woman was stopped in the Phoenix airport after a TSA agent said she wasn’t sure if they accepted D.C. IDs. At the time, Norton issued a statement saying the incident “dramatically personified” D.C.’s lack of voting rights in Congress.
“I am looking forward to a sit-down meeting with TSA officials to find a permanent solution to this problem,” Norton said today.