State-issued identity documents: diacritical marks.

Existing law requires that each live birth, fetal death, death, and marriage that occurs in the state be registered. Existing law charges the State Registrar with the execution of provisions regulating these and other vital records. Existing law requires the registrar to prescribe and furnish all record forms for use in carrying out those purposes, or to prescribe the format, quality, and content of forms electronically produced in each county for those purposes, and provides that no record forms or formats other than those prescribed by the registrar may be used. Existing law also provides for the registration of domestic partnerships and requires 2 persons desiring to become domestic partners to complete and file a Declaration of Domestic Partnership with the Secretary of State, who returns to the parties a copy of the registered form and a Certificate of Registered Domestic Partnership. Existing law also requires the Department of Motor Vehicles to issue drivers' licenses and identification cards. Existing law prescribes the form and content of Certificates of Registered Domestic Partnership, drivers' licenses, and identification cards. This bill would require the State Registrar to ensure that diacritical marks on English letters are properly recorded on all certificates of live birth, fetal death, or death, and all marriage licenses, including, but not limited to, accents, tildes, graves, umlauts, and cedillas. The bill would require the registrar to develop procedures to include other reasonable requests relating to names on certificates of live birth. The bill would impose similar requirements on the Secretary of State, with respect to Certificates of Registered Domestic Partnership, and on the Department of Motor Vehicles, with respect to drivers' licenses and identification cards. The bill would state findings and declarations of the Legislature relative to the use of diacritical marks on certificates of live birth and other forms of state-issued identity documentation.