AB 64 instructs the State Registrar of Vital Statistics to accept and, once funded, require diacritical marks on English letters in name fields on birth, death, fetal death, marriage, and confidential marriage records. It preserves the legal validity of records whether or not a diacritical mark appears, authorizes the registrar to publish an acceptable-list of marks by all-county letter (bypassing formal rulemaking), and permits the registrar to strip diacritics before furnishing data to government agencies.
The bill creates a pathway to correct already-registered records: beginning July 1, 2026, affected persons (or conservators/parents) may file an affidavit under oath, supported by one additional attesting affidavit and payment of the applicable fee, to add missing diacritics; county clerks have a parallel process for confidential marriage records. AB 64 also increases the additional fee collected on certified copies from $3 to $5 and includes allocation and reporting rules for that revenue.
At a Glance
What It Does
Requires the State Registrar to accept and, once funded, require diacritical marks in name fields on specified vital records; allows the registrar to list acceptable marks via administrative letters and to remove diacritics before sharing records with government agencies. Establishes an affidavit-based amendment process for existing records and raises the extra certified-copy fee to $5.
Who It Affects
State Registrar and local registrars, county clerks, IT vendors and data integrators for vital records systems, persons whose names include diacritical marks (or their parents/conservators), and any agency that receives vital statistics data from the State Registrar.
Why It Matters
This changes how names are recorded at the state and county level, recognizes non-ASCII identity elements in legal documents, and creates operational and compliance work for registrars and clerks. The fee increase funds vital-record modernization and alters the revenue mix for local trust funds and the State Registrar.
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What This Bill Actually Does
The statute directs the State Registrar to treat diacritical marks on English letters as acceptable entries in name fields across a set of core vital records: birth, fetal death, death, marriage licenses and certificates, and confidential marriage licenses and certificates. The requirement to actually implement use of diacritics is linked to a future appropriation: the registrar must begin enforcement no earlier than two years after the Legislature appropriates funds.
The bill explicitly says that whether a record includes a diacritical mark or not does not invalidate the document or change the constructive notice it provides.
Rather than require formal rulemaking, the State Registrar may assemble and publish a list of acceptable diacritical marks using all-county letters or similar instructions. The registrar also has express authority to remove diacritical marks from stored data before providing records to federal, state, or local agencies, acknowledging that downstream systems may not accommodate such characters.To fix already-registered records, AB 64 creates a defined amendment pathway.
Starting July 1, 2026, an individual (or their conservator, or a parent/guardian for a minor) can file an affidavit under oath describing the correction needed because of a missing diacritical mark; that affidavit must be supported by one other person with knowledge of the facts, filed with the State Registrar, and accompanied by payment of the amendment fee referenced elsewhere in law. For confidential marriage certificates, the party asserting the omission follows a similar sworn-affidavit route with the county clerk, who may charge a fee up to the amount charged for other amended confidential marriage certificates and must note the amendment and its date on the otherwise unaltered original confidential record.The bill also alters fee law: it raises the additional fee collected from applicants for certified copies of birth, death, fetal death, marriage, and dissolution records to $5.
The text preserves existing percentage-based distributions (including transmission of 45 percent of this additional fee to the State Registrar and retention of the remainder by local collecting agencies or deposit to local trust funds), and it keeps reporting and allowable uses for those local trust funds focused on modernization and data analysis.
The Five Things You Need to Know
The State Registrar must accept diacritical marks in name fields and, once the Legislature appropriates funds, require their use — the funding trigger delays mandatory implementation.
The registrar may publish an acceptable-list of diacritical marks via all-county letters or similar guidance without using the Administrative Procedure Act.
Beginning July 1, 2026, a person (or conservator/parent) can file a sworn affidavit, supported by one other attesting affidavit and payment of the statutory amendment fee, to add missing diacritical marks to an already-registered vital record.
The State Registrar is authorized to remove diacritical marks from stored birth, death, fetal death, and marriage data before furnishing records to federal, state, or local government agencies.
AB 64 increases the additional certified-copy fee from $3 to $5 and preserves the distribution rules sending 45% to the State Registrar and the remainder to local vital and health statistics trust funds (with reporting and use restrictions).
Section-by-Section Breakdown
Every bill we cover gets an analysis of its key sections.
Acceptance and required use of diacritical marks; scope and definitions
This section places diacritical marks squarely within acceptable name entries for registrant and parent name fields on live birth, fetal death, death, marriage, and confidential marriage records. It clarifies that presence or absence of a diacritical mark does not invalidate a document or change the legal notice conveyed by its proper recordation. The provision also defines diacritical marks by example (accents, tildes, graves, umlauts, cedillas) so implementers have a baseline set of characters to consider.
Administrative path and data-sharing exception
Instead of initiating formal rulemaking, the State Registrar can compile and issue an 'acceptable diacritical marks' list through all-county letters or similar instructions. That expedites publication but also reduces the procedural transparency of who was consulted. The section separately authorizes the registrar to remove diacritics from stored data before transmitting vital statistics to federal, state, or local agencies — an explicit nod to interoperability problems in downstream systems.
Affidavit-based amendments for existing records; confidential marriage process
This section creates the remedial mechanism for records already on file. For most vital records, a person (or conservator/parent) may file a sworn affidavit describing the correction and must attach one supporting affidavit from someone with knowledge of the facts; the State Registrar reviews the submission and issues an amendment upon receipt of the statutory fee. For confidential marriage records the affidavit is filed with the county clerk, who may charge a fee up to the amount typically charged for amended confidential marriage certificates and must file and date-stamp the amendment while leaving the original otherwise unaltered. Requiring the affidavit to be under oath implicates perjury law and is flagged in the bill as a state-mandated local program.
Certified-copy fee increase and trust fund distributions
The bill raises the additional per-certified-copy fee to $5 and keeps existing distribution mechanics: 45 percent of that fee is transmitted to the State Registrar and the remainder funds local vital and health statistics trust funds (or is transmitted to the State Registrar where a local fund does not exist). The statute preserves spending rules for local trust funds (modernization, automation, analysis) and reporting requirements from counties on how the funds are used. The amendment also sets operative language governing when the section takes effect.
Mandates and reimbursement carve-outs
The bill declares that no reimbursement is required for costs tied to creating or changing crimes (i.e., the affidavit-under-oath work that touches perjury), but it leaves open reimbursement if the Commission on State Mandates finds other state-mandated costs. Practically, this places potential administrative burdens on counties and local officials unless the Commission orders otherwise.
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Explore Government in Codify Search →Who Benefits and Who Bears the Cost
Every bill creates winners and losers. Here's who stands to gain and who bears the cost.
Who Benefits
- People whose names include diacritical marks (immigrant and Indigenous communities) — they gain the ability to have legal vital records reflect culturally and linguistically accurate spellings.
- Parents registering births and registrants seeking name-correct records — the bill creates a defined, non-judicial route to add missing diacritics to existing records via sworn affidavit.
- State and local public-health analysts and modernization advocates — the $5 fee increases dedicated funding streams intended for vital-records system improvements and data analysis.
- Advocacy groups focused on identity and civil registration — they get a statutory acknowledgement that non-ASCII orthography matters in official records, which can support broader inclusion efforts.
Who Bears the Cost
- State Registrar and county registrars — they must update policies, lists of acceptable marks, guidance, and possibly IT systems to accept, store, render, and validate diacritical characters.
- County clerks — they must review, file, and note sworn affidavits for confidential marriage amendments and may face increased workload without guaranteed reimbursement.
- IT vendors, data integrators, and downstream agencies (including state and federal recipients) — they must map, normalize, or strip diacritics to maintain compatibility with legacy systems and identity-matching processes.
- Individuals seeking corrections — they must file a sworn affidavit, secure a supporting witness affidavit, and pay the applicable amendment fee, which may create access costs for low-income people.
Key Issues
The Core Tension
The central dilemma is between accurately representing individuals’ names (including diacritical marks) on official records and keeping vital-statistics systems interoperable, private, and administrable: adding diacritics improves cultural and legal accuracy but creates compatibility, cost, and confidentiality trade-offs that the statute addresses unevenly.
The bill resolves a clear fairness question — whether diacritics should be permitted in legal name fields — but leaves multiple implementation choices and trade-offs unresolved. The registrar’s authority to publish an acceptable-mark list via all-county letters speeds rollout but avoids the notice-and-comment processes that surface edge cases (multi-character graphemes, composed vs precomposed Unicode code points, or languages that use marks to change pronunciation vs separate letters).
That choice reduces administrative friction but increases the risk of inconsistent local implementation.
Granting the State Registrar explicit authority to strip diacritical marks before furnishing data to other government agencies undercuts the bill’s goal of improving name accuracy for identity purposes. If vital-record data shared for verification or benefits determination are sanitized, registrants may still face mismatches with other documents.
The affidavit remedy also raises practical questions: requiring a supporting attesting affidavit and a sworn statement expands perjury exposure, possibly deterring correction; and the law ties implementation to appropriation timelines that leave counties and vendors uncertain about when to invest in system upgrades. Finally, the confidential-marriage amendment process requires the county to note the amendment on the original confidential certificate while leaving the document otherwise unaltered — that procedural design preserves an audit trail but could clash with expectations of secrecy for confidential marriage records.
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