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Colloquially known as the 'Mutant Registration Act,' X-ID was a piece of national legislation which required mutants to identify themselves as such on any federally-issued ID and established that the federal government would not accept State-issued ID without the same requirement.
The Simmons Amendment to the X-ID legislation further required that all mutants register themselves and their abilities in the Mutant Registration Database, which had previously been created in reaction to Sensitive Positions legislation and Mandatory Criminal Registration.
Both parts of the X-ID legislation were declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court and overturned on March 2, 2007. The registrations collected during the duration of the law, however, remain in place. Some individuals have challenged this, and are seeking the ability to remove themselves from the database.
X-ID
Introduced by Senator Kay Williams (R-NY) on June 25, 2006, X-ID was an act which stated that the federal government would only accept IDs (such as drivers licenses and passports) which fit certain guidelines. States would not have to conform to these guidelines, but if they did not, their IDs would not be nationally valid.
The guideline X-ID put into place is that every person who applied for a new or renewed ID must be tested for the X-factor. If they were a mutant, that would be marked on their ID with an 'X', and in some cases (as determined by the state) further information, such as a danger level or category of mutation, may be included. IDs without X-identification would no longer be accepted after a period of eight years.
At the time, the government possessed technology which allowed X-ID testing to be possible. It required a blood sample and took about 6 to 8 hours to return a result. It ran 96 tests at a time, and each person would have two samples tested. Although it was not a point-and-scan, but it was cheap, fast, and easy to produce in bulk, making it possible for there to be thousands of testing centers around the US in minimum time. Recent leaps in certain types of technology have made even this cost and time delay null - today, the government and many other organizations possess QuikID.
X-ID was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court and overturned on March 2, 2007.
Simmons Amendment
The Simmons Amendment required that all mutants register in the Mutant Registration Database within thirty days from the date X-ID was signed into law. X-ID became law on July 17, 2006, and all mutants were legally required to be registered by August 16, 2006. The penalty for not registering was determined by individual states. In New York, it was a class B misdemeanor, which can be cause for up to three months of jail time, 1 year of probation, and a fine not to exceed $500.
Thanks to the influence of the Hellfire Club, New York chose to make the penalty for not registering quite minimal. If caught, a non-registered mutant was fined $10-$20, and the misdemeanor was added to their criminal record.
Registering involved adding all personal information - name, birthdate, address, phone number, social security number, employment information, etc - as well as the extent and type of the mutation. If it was determined that a person was being uncooperative or may be lying, further testing to determine the specifics of a mutation can be ordered.
The Simmons Amendment, commonly known as Mandatory Registration, was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court and overturned on March 2, 2007.
