How did Pennsylvania get to this point? In 2012, the legislature passed a "nonparticipation" act that barred the state Department of Transportation (PennDot) from complying. Critics said the ID law was an "unfunded mandate" and intruded on states' rights. "There was a lot of misinformation that this would be a national database, which it is not," Bowman said. "It's a state database. The General Assembly figured that the majority of states would do the same thing." But that did not happen.