State Department and Passports

The U.S. State Department has ordered nonprofit public libraries across the country to stop serving as passport acceptance facilities, telling them in cease‑and‑desist letters that, under federal law, non‑governmental organizations cannot collect and retain passport application fees. The directive, which took effect this week after letters went out in late fall, does not affect government‑run libraries but could hit as many as 1,400 mostly nonprofit public libraries, according to the American Library Association, although State insists the ineligible sites are less than 1 percent of its 7,500‑plus facility network. Librarians in states like Connecticut say they have already had to end passport services after nearly two decades, cutting off a convenient option that working families and rural residents relied on and that generated fee revenue to support library operations. Bipartisan lawmakers from Connecticut, Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey and Maryland have urged Secretary of State Marco Rubio to extend the program and are backing legislation to amend the Passport Act so 501(c)(3) public libraries can keep processing applications, warning that otherwise people will face longer travel, lost work time, and even library layoffs or closures. They also tie the move to a broader environment in which Real ID rules, Trump‑backed proof‑of‑citizenship voting proposals, and fear of immigration enforcement are pushing more citizens to secure passports as core identity documents.