Wyoming Says Handing Over a Digital Driver's License Is Not Consent to Search Your Phone

Most states that give a driver a statutory answer on consent built it out of cannabis legalisation. Wyoming did not, because Wyoming has not legalised cannabis in any form. A full-text search of all forty-five titles of the Wyoming Statutes returns no occurrence of the phrase grounds for search, no odour or smell provision tied to a vehicle stop, and no pretextual-stop statute. What Wyoming does have is a narrow, precise and quite modern rule about the device in your hand.

Wyoming issues an optional digital driver's license. W.S. 31-7-102(a)(xlix) defines it as a secure electronic representation of a physical driver's license stored on the driver's portable electronic device that may be viewed or verified by a person to whom access is allowed, and makes clear it is optional to purchase and supplemental to the physical licence. W.S. 31-7-102(a)(li) defines a portable electronic device as an electronic device that is portable in nature, is easily carried or conveyed by hand and may be used to display, transmit, or both, which is broad enough to cover a phone, a tablet or a smart watch. W.S. 31-7-115(d) allows the department to issue the digital credential only to someone who already holds, or is simultaneously issued, the corresponding physical licence, and requires the design to protect the holder's privacy to the maximum extent practicable and to remove any need to relinquish possession of the device.

W.S. 31-7-116 then converts that design goal into two enforceable rules. First, display of a digital driver's license means the licensee may provide access to it on their own device, and no law enforcement or judicial officer demanding that display for any licensing or identification verification purpose shall take custody of the device. This is a sharp contrast with the physical credential, where the same section says display means the surrender of the physical license to the demanding officer, after which the officer shall immediately return it. Wyoming deliberately wrote one rule for cardboard and a different one for glass. Second, and this is the consent rule, display of a digital driver's license shall not serve as consent to search the driver's portable electronic device. Showing the credential unlocks nothing else on the phone as a matter of law.

The same two sentences appear again in W.S. 31-8-101(c) for the digital identification card, the credential a Wyoming resident who does not drive can hold. That section borrows the portable electronic device definition directly from W.S. 31-7-102(a)(li) at W.S. 31-8-101(d)(ii), so the protection is identical whether the person stopped is a licensed driver or a passenger carrying only a state ID.

Both sections carry the same practical caveat: nothing in either requires anyone other than the department to accept a digital credential, or requires the purchase of verification equipment. A Wyoming officer, deputy or trooper may still insist on the physical card, and a driver who has only the digital version has not satisfied the possession duty in the first sentence of W.S. 31-7-116, which requires every licensee to have the driver's license in immediate possession at all times when driving.

Where consent is refused, Wyoming's route is a warrant under Title 7 chapter 7. W.S. 7-7-101(a) lets a district judge, district court commissioner, circuit judge or authorised magistrate issue a search warrant for property stolen or embezzled, designed or used as the means of committing an offence, possessed or used in violation of any law, or constituting evidence tending to show a crime was committed or that a particular person committed it. W.S. 7-7-102 hands the procedure, including motions to suppress, to the Wyoming Rules of Criminal Procedure, and W.S. 7-7-105 says a more specific search-and-seizure statute displaces the general chapter where one applies. Wyoming's impaired driving chapter is the clearest example of that: W.S. 31-6-102(d) authorises a chemical test on a refusing driver only on issuance of a search warrant, including a remotely communicated search warrant, and expressly limits remote warrants to that purpose.

S. S. 31-8-101(c) are written as prohibitions on the officer, not as offences by the driver, and neither section attaches a penalty or a suppression remedy. There is no Wyoming statute making evidence inadmissible because an officer took custody of a phone during a licence check. S. 7-7-102 makes the governing procedure, or as a complaint to the employing agency. Where the driver is charged, the analysis runs under the Fourth Amendment and article 1 section 4 of the Wyoming Constitution rather than under a statutory exclusionary rule, because Title 7 chapter 7 contains none.

S. S. 31-5-1201(b) supplies a fine of not more than $200 for a first conviction, $300 for a second of the same offence within a year, and $500 or up to six months for a third within a year of the first. That section also supplies its own defence: no person charged with violating it shall be convicted if he produces in court a driver's license previously issued to him and valid at the time of his arrest.