Registration

Overview

On 13 December, 2019, the National Oversight and Registration of Mutant Abilities Law, more commonly known as the mutant registration act, passed into law. The newly created Mutant Affairs Division (a child agency of the Department of Homeland Security) was tasked with designing and implementing the fiercely controversial mutant registration regulations within sixty days.

...On 14 February, 2022, the newly designed provisions of the Mutant Registration Act actually came into practice. Nationwide, all US residents aged 18 and older (not simply citizens -- anyone staying on anything more permanent than a tourist visa) must register, whether or not they are mutants.

Efforts have been taken, says MAD, to make initial voluntary registration as simple and accessible a process as possible. Locations where people can go to register are myriad -- Mutant Affairs Division offices are located in many neighborhoods, and registration forms can also be submitted at a wide range of locations such as DMVs, police stations, hospitals and clinics, fire stations, post offices.

Registrants need to provide proof of identity at the time of registration, and fill out the applicable forms to enter their information into the system.

All individuals registered in the system are processed with:

• Full name
• Picture
• SSN, if applicable
• Birthdate
• Home address
• Mutant/Human status
• A complete description of known mutant abilities, if applicable

Failing to Register

Failing to register is a civil, not a criminal, violation -- it is punishable by fines (increasingly steep the longer a violator is in noncompliance) that begin at $500 the first year and top out at $2500 by the fifth year and every subsequent year a person fails to register. Additionally, RealIDs and passports will no longer be issued to those who have not registered, and state benefits (such as SNAP, Medicare/Medicaid, housing assistance, etc.) are only available to those who have registered.

Most of the ramifications of failing to register, though, come not from the government directly but from an over-eager private sector jumping at the chance to incorporate registration into a new way of doing things.

Those who are not registered, now likely find it very difficult to:

• Find banks that will let you open new accounts
• Find landlords willing to rent to them
• Enroll in higher education
• Find employment that is not under the table

Misrepresenting Information at Registration

While the consequences for failing to register can be a nuisance and a large complication in life, the consequences for misrepresenting yourself at registration can be severe -- lying on registration documents or in registration testimony is a criminal, not civil, offense, and is a federal crime that is considered a felony.

For everyone, regardless of whether they are human or any classification of mutant, the consequences for lying on any part of their registry information is a minimum of $1000 and up to a $10000 fine.

There is, additionally, a mandatory jail time, but this will be intensely variable depending on which part of the information you lied about and what the correct information was. The minimum jail term for lying about any part of registration is a year -- the maximum imprisonment can be ten years, if you lie about your genetic status. MAD often likes to note that this can go for humans as well -- if you are a human who says you are a mutant on your form; they take lying about genetic status on registration quite seriously!

The Mutant Affairs Division is aware that the nature of mutant powers sometimes changes and evolves. Having powers that are in a state of flux means that sometimes what an individual discloses at the time of registration will not remain constant throughout their lifetime. It is that individual's responsibility to keep their registry entry up to date, in the event of any changes in their ability.

There will be no penalties associated with voluntarily disclosing changes to mutant powers that have occurred or mutant powers that have been discovered since the time of registration (if the registrant believed themselves to be human at the time of entry into the registry). Simply stop by any registry office to fill out an update form -- the process is much the same -- and this new information will be added to the registration entry.

In the event of changes to registration status, registrants have a grace period of one month to update their registration entries without penalization.

In the event of allegations of lying on registry entries, there is an initial investigation into the facts. If there is enough evidence that the Mutant Affairs Division deems the allegation to have sufficient weight, they will get a court order for genetic testing (if the allegation revolved around genetic status); there might be a trial if the allegation revolved around misinformation about the nature of the information in some other manner. If a genetic test is required, the Division will pay the cost; if the test determines that the Registrant had in fact been lying about their genetic status, the cost of the test will often be folded into whatever punitive measures are given them.

An anonymous tipline and website have been set up to help collect reports of those who are suspected to have submitted false information to the Registry.

Registration Classification

Everyone who registers is classified along several different axes and assigned a designation accordingly.

The first number represents the threat level MAD has assessed the ability to pose to society. This falls along a scale of 0-10, 0 being human/no ability, 10 being a potential global threat.

The second letter, always capitalized A, B, or C, represents whether the person appears to have standard human physiology (A); whether they appear largely humanoid but with visibly divergent characteristics (B); or whether their physiology is markedly divergent from standard human (C).

Occasionally some people may receive a third letter, always in lower case, designating certain abilities thought to merit unique classification in the public eye. Individuals with psionic abilities receive a "p" at the end of their designation; individuals with metamorphic abilities who can radically alter their physical shape receive an "m".

Your Character Registered -- Now What?

This will depend on what tier of the registry they are determined to be on. It takes a little while for this to be determined -- they won't find out, immediately. After submitting paperwork, processing takes 3-5 weeks; registrants will receive a card in the mail (if they have no home address, they can pick it up at the Mutant Affairs Division office where they registered) certifying their registration and what classification they have been added to.

The database as a whole is not, on the whole, publicly accessible. By and large, the information in it is not put out there for most people's knowledge.

There is a count being kept on the registry website of how many people have been registered and what all the designations are, but this count is anonymized countrywide.

Law enforcement can search the database during any interactions -- the information that pings varies. -- for anyone level 5 and below they receive only whether they are registered, mutant/human. Higher levels, law enforcement receives the entire designation.

Being on the registry, additionally, will turn up in now in many standard background checks when seeking things such as employment and housing. In such cases, the checks do not have access to the full detailed information in the registry, but simply the classification given by the Registry; they will have no further information to go on than that. Any immigrants seeking entry to the country are added to the registry straightaway; while there is officially no policy of discrimination based on mutant status, for those seeking permanent residency, finding anyone to sponsor visas gets exponentially harder when mutant status is known.

Past this, the effects of being on the registry are much as you might expect they are if someone at any of these stages of life were to find out if you are a mutant. There are no legal protections against anti-mutant discrimination, so while there is also no codified discriminatory effects as yet to the registry, in certain areas of life mutants might find it more difficult to obtain housing, employment, etc when their background checks come through and those little numbers start pinging.