What are the 12 states with 'stop and identify' laws and how do courts interpret them today?
Executive summary
The sources provided do not support a definitive list of "12 states" with stop-and-identify laws; national surveys and legal charts instead report between about two dozen states with some form of statute, and the precise count and scope vary by database and year [1] [2] [3]. What is clear from the legal record is that the U.S. Supreme Court has left room for states to require a detained suspect to give a name in a lawful Terry stop while state statutory language and state-court decisions determine the practical reach of those laws [4] [5].
1. How many states actually have these laws — numbers conflict
Different compendia list different totals: one data aggregator reports 26 states with stop-and-identify statutes as of 2024 [1], another claims 24 [2], while legal and nonprofit charts catalog individual state statutes without reducing them to one universally accepted “12-state” list [6] [7]. The variance reflects different inclusion criteria (some lists count only statutes that expressly penalize refusal; others include statutes that interact with obstructing or resisting laws), and the supplied materials do not contain an authoritative enumeration of exactly 12 states [5] [6].
2. What the Supreme Court has said and the resulting legal baseline
The Supreme Court in Hiibel v. Sixth Judicial District Court of Nevada held that a state may, consistent with the Fourth Amendment, enact a law requiring a detained person to disclose his name during a lawful Terry stop, provided the statute is reasonably related to the detention and not unconstitutionally vague [4] [8]. Conversely, the Court struck down a California statute as void for vagueness in Kolender v. Lawson when the law required “credible and reliable” identification without clear standards — a reminder that statutory clarity matters [5].
3. How lower courts and states interpret and apply those statutes today
State courts and federal circuits interpret stop-and-identify statutes unevenly: some state supreme courts construe “identify” narrowly as giving a name (Nevada interpretation cited in Hiibel) while other courts permit charging a refusal under separate obstructing or resisting statutes even when the stop-and-identify statute itself lacks a standalone penalty [5]. The interaction between a state’s stop-and-identify text and its obstructing laws produces different practical consequences from state to state [5] [7].
4. The controlling factual trigger: reasonable and articulable suspicion
Across the materials, a consistent judicial limit is that an officer must have reasonable and articulable suspicion of criminal involvement to detain someone under Terry, and only then can a stop-and-identify obligation (if the state has one) be triggered — the requirement to identify does not generally apply to random, non-suspicion stops [4] [9] [1]. How much information a person must give (name only versus showing ID, date of birth, address) varies by statute and statutory interpretation in each state [1] [9].
5. Practical consequences and continuing controversies
Because statutory wording and obstructing statutes differ, noncompliance in some states has led to arrests under separate obstructing statutes even when the stop-and-identify law itself had no explicit penalty — a practice litigated in multiple jurisdictions and documented in legal summaries [5] [10]. Civil liberties groups, legal clinics, and state charts continue to track these statutes because of concerns about racial profiling, vagueness, and the interaction of vocal identification requirements with Fifth Amendment silence claims [7] [6].
6. What can be reliably answered given the reporting provided
Based on the sources supplied, it is not possible to produce a sourced, accurate list of exactly twelve states that currently have stop-and-identify laws because the sources disagree on counts and the supplied charts list states without producing a single canonical “12-state” roster [1] [2] [6]. For a definitive, up-to-date state-by-state list and precise statutory language, consult the ILRC chart and the ACLU state tables referenced in the sources, which catalog specific statutes and judicial interpretations [6] [7].