Kansas court upholds AG Kobach’s argument in transgender driver’s license case

TOPEKA — A district court has sided with Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach on a temporary block to keep Kansas residents from changing the gender listed on their drivers’ licenses.

Civil rights advocates warn the move will lead to “forced outing” of the state’s transgender residents.

On Monday, Shawnee County District Judge Teresa Watson issued a temporary injunction on gender marker changes for driver’s licenses. The move follows January court hearings on the implementation of a wide-ranging anti-trans law that passed last year.

“This decision is a victory for the rule of law and common sense,” Kobach said. “The Legislature wisely stated that state agencies should record biological sex at birth, and today the court held that the meaning of the law is clear.”

He first filed the lawsuit against the Kansas Department of Revenue’s Division of Vehicles in July, seeking to ban transgender people from changing gender markers on their driver’s licenses.

Kobach pointed to a provision in Senate Bill 180, which took effect in July, to make his case that driver’s licenses need to show sex assigned at birth. Under the law, genders are defined by reproductive organs, and state agencies that collect vital statistics are directed to identify individuals “as either male or female at birth.”

At the time, the district court issued a temporary restraining order blocking Kelly’s administration from making gender marker changes on identity cards and driver’s licenses. The court granted the American Civil Liberties Union of Kansas permission to intervene in the lawsuit on behalf of five transgender Kansans who would be harmed by the gender marker ban.

During the two days of hearings in January, Kobach argued for the injunction against representatives from the American Civil Liberties Union of Kansas and Kansas Department of Revenue. Intervenors testified about their own experiences with transphobia, including forced outings when they had to show people their driver’s license.

Watson in her ruling said the transgender intervenors did not adequately show the damaging consequences of having mismatched gender markers.

“None testified to any actual threat to their personal safety; rather, some talked in general terms about hearing of harm that had come to unnamed others in unnamed places in unspecified situations,” Watson wrote. “The threat of injury to the State of Kansas outweighs any harm the temporary injunction may cause.”

D.C. Hiegert, LGBTQ+ legal fellow with the ACLU of Kansas, said the ACLU was disappointed in the ruling but would continue to examine other legal options.

“We will continue working toward a vision of our state that allows all of us to live in peace, free from government persecution and impositions on our core identities,” Hiegert said. “We remain unconvinced that the imaginary injury to the state could ever outweigh the enormous harm our clients and other transgender Kansans have and will continue to experience by being forced to carry inaccurate identification documents, in violation of their rights under the state constitution.”