Nevada Veteran Designation on a Driver’s License

Most states let a veteran ask for a marking on a driver's licence. Nevada requires the Department of Motor Vehicles to ask the veteran, and then uses the answer to find veterans who are not in the system. That is the interesting part of this entry. The inquiry, NRS 483.292, subsection 1: "When a person applies to the Department for the initial issuance of an instruction permit or driver's license pursuant to NRS 483.290 or 483.291 or the renewal of an instruction permit or driver's license, the Department shall inquire whether the person desires to declare that he or she is a veteran of the Armed Forces of the United States." Shall inquire. Every initial application and every renewal. Nevada licences run for years, so over a licence cycle the State asks essentially every driving adult in the state whether they are a veteran. What a declaration requires, subsection 2. The person must provide "evidence satisfactory to the Department that he or she has been honorably discharged from the Armed Forces of the United States", and "a written release authorizing the Department of Motor Vehicles to provide to the Department of Veterans Services personal information about the person", signed and in a form the Director requires under NRS 481.063. Two things there. The discharge standard for the declaration is honorable, which is narrower than the NRS 417.005 definition of veteran used elsewhere in Nevada law and narrower than the "other than dishonorable" standard that definition ends with. And the declaration is coupled to a data-sharing release: declaring means agreeing that the DMV may hand personal information to the Department of Veterans Services. A veteran should understand that trade before signing. The purpose is benign and useful, the Department of Veterans Services uses the referral to contact veterans who may not know what they are entitled to, and the whole of this catalog exists because that gap is real. But it is a release of personal information to another state agency, and a veteran who does not want to be contacted can decline the declaration and still obtain the licence. The section closes the loop with a reporting duty: the Department compiles and transmits to the Department of Veterans Services a monthly list of persons who have declared status. NRS 483.852 does the same thing for identification cards, so a veteran who does not drive is reached through the same mechanism. The designation itself is separate from the declaration, and this is where people get confused. NRS 483.292, subsection 3 sets out what a veteran must do to get a designation printed on the licence, over and above declaring status. NRS 483.2925, subsection 1 then obliges the Department: "Upon the application of a person who requests that his or her instruction permit or driver's license indicate that he or she is a veteran of the Armed Forces of the United States pursuant to subsection 3 of NRS 483.292, and who satisfies the requirements of that subsection, the Department shall place on any instruction permit or driver's license issued to the person pursuant to the provisions of this chapter a designation that the person is a veteran." So declaring status under subsections 1 and 2 feeds the outreach list. Requesting the designation under subsection 3 puts the marking on the card. A veteran who wants the marking has to ask for it specifically. Subsection 2 of NRS 483.2925 leaves the design and placement of the designation to the Director, so what the marking looks like is administrative and has changed over time. What the designation is good for. It is proof of veteran status at a counter, which saves carrying a DD214 to a retailer, a clinic or a ballgame. It does not by itself establish eligibility for any benefit in this file: the property tax exemptions require their own affidavits and discharge proof, the plates require their own evidence, and the licence marking is not among the documents any of those sections name. What Nevada does not appear to do here, and the absence is worth stating: there is no provision in these sections waiving the licence or identification card fee for a veteran or a disabled veteran, of the kind several states in this catalog carry. The declaration and the designation are free of separate charge in the sense that they are part of a transaction the applicant is already paying for, but the licence fee itself is unchanged.