St-Hilaire v. Commissioner of the Indiana Bureau of Motor Vehicles

Case Overview

In August 2023, the National Immigration Law Center and the ACLU of Indiana filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of five Haitian community members against the Commissioner of the Indiana Bureau of Motor Vehicles (BMV), who is responsible for enforcing a discriminatory state driver’s license law. The law, House Enrolled Act 1050 (H.E.A. 1050), extended driver’s license and state ID eligibility to immigrants granted humanitarian parole—but only for certain Ukrainian parolees. The law excluded parolees from other countries and by enforcing it, the BMV Commissioner was violating the civil and constitutional rights of certain immigrants based on their country of origin.  

U.S. law guarantees all people, regardless of their country of origin or race, equal protection under the law and prohibits states from discriminating based on these protected grounds. States also cannot create their own immigration classifications—a power exclusively held by the federal government. 

In January 2024, the judge in the case granted our request to block the law and ordered Indiana to remove the restrictions which selectively blocked people from all countries other than Ukraine from accessing these forms of identification.  

While the lawsuit was successful, unfortunately in March of 2024, Indiana passed H.B. 1162, which reinstated restrictions on people with humanitarian parole from accessing driver’s licenses and identification.