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Marriage license clerk doesn't believe man when he tells her New Mexico is really a state

By Natalie Dreier, Cox Media Group National Content Desk
By Natalie Dreier, Cox Media Group National Content Desk

A clerk at the District of Columbia Courts Marriage Bureau may want to go back to school, or even try Google when it comes to remembering the 50 states.

Gavin Clarkson went to the office with his fiancee to apply for a marriage license on Nov. 20. But the couple had a slight issue. The unidentified clerk wouldn't accept Clarkson's driver's license from New Mexico as proof of identity, the Las Cruces Sun News reported.

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The clerk pressed Clarkson for a passport, saying that he was a foreign citizen, the clerk saying, according to Clarkson, “My supervisor says we cannot accept international driver’s licenses. Do you have a New Mexico passport?”

He said that while the clerk seemed to believe that New Mexico wasn’t a state, and asked for a passport, those also waiting in line found the situation funny.

Clarkson, who is running for New Mexico's secretary of state, went to Facebook to share his story.

He has lived in New Mexico since 2012. His fiancee, now wife, Marina, immigrated to the U.S. from Argentina in the 1990s. She was a legal permanent resident before becoming a naturalized citizen. She lives in Washington, D.C., and that's where they were married after the ID hiccup, the Sun News reported.

A representative of the D.C. courts system confirmed the clerk’s misinformation.

"We understand that a clerk in our Marriage Bureau made a mistake regarding New Mexico's 106-year history as a state. We very much regret the error and the slight delay it caused a New Mexico resident in applying for a D.C. marriage license," Leah Gurowitz, director of media and public relations for D.C. Courts told the Sun News via email.

 

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