A state judge ordered Kansas to stop letting transgender people change their gender marker on their driver’s licenses

By Alisha Ebrahimji, CNN

(CNN) — A judge has sided with Kansas’ Republican attorney general, ruling the state cannot allow transgender residents to choose gender identity on driver’s licenses.

Shawnee County District Court Judge Teresa Watson issued a temporary restraining order Monday, three days after Attorney General Kris Kobach filed a lawsuit against two individuals at the Kansas Department of Revenue, under which the motor vehicles division is housed.

Kobach wants state officials to comply with a new law. The revenue department said Tuesday it filed a motion to dissolve the judge’s order.

On July 1, Senate Bill 180 – dubbed the “Kansas Women’s Bill of Rights” – went into effect, mandating that gender markers on birth certificates and driver’s licenses reflect a person’s sex at birth – reversing a 2019 federal equal protection lawsuit settlement which allowed birth certificates to be changed to reflect a person’s gender identity.

Kobach has disagreed with Gov. Laura Kelly, a Democrat, about the driver’s license issue. Before Monday’s ruling, Kelly had allowed state officials to use their legal counsel’s interpretations of the law, she told CNN in a statement last month.

In her order, which remains in effect for two weeks, Watson wrote, “Licenses are used by law enforcement to identify criminal suspects, crime victims, wanted persons, missing persons, and others. Compliance with stated legal requirements for identifying license holders is a public safety concern.”

Many trans Kansas residents, who want their gender identity recognized in all aspects of their life have expressed concern for their own safety and welfare as they use public restrooms or interact with law enforcement.

“How many challenges is that going to cost me as I travel, as I move throughout the state?” Suzanne Wheeler, a trans resident told CNN. “What happens if I do go into a bathroom and somebody goes, ‘Hey, wait, this tall woman has a baritone voice, and I think she’s trans,’ and I get the police called on me.”

“My biggest concern is SB 180, addresses a nonissue and puts an already vulnerable population at risk.”

Kobach said driver’s licenses are issued for six years and are difficult to take back, a point Watson noted. And, the attorney general argued, Kelly “cannot pick and choose which laws she will enforce and which laws she will ignore.”

Kelly told CNN her administration and Kobach’s office have had many conversations about the law.

“Kansas Department of Health and Environment and Kansas Department of Revenue disagree about its impacts on their operations and will instead keep in place their policies regarding gender markers on birth certificates and driver’s licenses,” she said at the time.

Kelly vetoed SB 180 in April before an override by the Republican-dominated Legislature.

A total of 281 requests to change the gender identity marker on driver’s licenses have been made this year, the Kansas Revenue Department told CNN on Tuesday – over 500 people in total since the 2019 lawsuit settlement.

In Kansas, “a birth certificate is a record of what happened at the moment a baby came out of the womb,” Kobach said in a news release earlier this month announcing the legal opinion he wrote on SB 180. “Similarly, a driver’s license is a state document reflecting a state database for state purposes. It is not a canvas on which a person can paint one’s expression and preferences.”

But the state revenue department argues the way it has handled driver’s license applications has caused no problems for law enforcement and its actions are “concordant with law.”

“How an applicant identifies ‘gender’ supports one of the primary purposes of the driver’s license, that the person stopped during a traffic stop or attempting to cash a check at a bank, is who they say they are and that their clothes and appearance match the photo and gender marker on the card,” the department said.

CNN reached out to Kobach and Kelly. Watson declined to comment.

State records, the new law says, include school documents and records of state departments and agencies.

The definition also applies to state regulation of public restrooms, locker rooms and athletics, plus prisons, domestic violence shelters and rape crisis centers, the legislation states.

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