TOPEKA, Kan. — Kansas legislators botched the drafting of a brand new regulation aimed toward stopping transgender individuals from altering how their intercourse is listed on their driver’s licenses, a state company’s lawyer argued in a court docket submitting made public Tuesday.
An anti-transgender rights regulation that took impact July 1 conflicts with one other regulation governing what seems on driver’s licenses, Kansas Department of Revenue lawyer Ted Smith stated. The division’s motor automobiles division points driver’s licenses, and Smith stated the division nonetheless should observe the older regulation as a result of it applies particularly to driver’s licenses. The new regulation doesn’t point out them.
Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly introduced final month that Kansas would proceed to alter transgender individuals’s driver’s licenses to replicate their gender identities, regardless of the brand new regulation. Republican state Attorney General Kris Kobach filed a lawsuit in state court docket on Friday in opposition to the division’s head and the motor automobiles division’s director in a bid to make Kansas one of many few states that don’t permit such modifications.
District Judge Teresa Watson issued an order Monday directing the state to cease permitting such modifications, performing at Kobach’s request and with no listening to. The order expires July 24, although the decide may lengthen it. Smith’s submitting, dated Monday, asks Watson to rescind her order, and she or he set a Zoom listening to for Wednesday.
“There is a remedy available to the Legislature,” Smith wrote in his submitting, saying lawmakers can contemplate altering the motive force’s license regulation subsequent 12 months. They’ve adjourned for this 12 months.
The Department of Revenue says greater than 500 individuals have modified the intercourse itemizing on their driver’s licenses since July 2019, together with 172 final month alone.
The new Kansas regulation defines female and male primarily based on the intercourse assigned an individual at beginning for “any” different regulation or state regulation – stopping authorized recognition for transgender individuals’s gender identities. It was a part of a wave of anti-transgender laws in Republican-led statehouses throughout the U.S., and the GOP-controlled Legislature enacted it over Kelly’s veto.
The Kansas driver’s license regulation says every software for a license should embody an individual’s “gender,” though the itemizing on the license is “sex.” Smith says that language has been in place since 2007 and was clarified by a 2011 coverage that Smith himself outlined in a memo to driver’s license examiners.
Two states that don’t permit modifications for transgender individuals, Montana and Tennessee, have particular provisions relating to driver’s licenses.
Kobach stated final month that the brand new regulation not solely prevents modifications within the intercourse listings for driver’s licenses but additionally requires the state to undo earlier modifications in its data. He stated in a memo filed with Watson on Friday in Shawnee County, residence to the state capital of Topeka, {that a} license should checklist “a person’s sex at birth, not some other self-chosen identifier.”
He stated the motor automobiles division is refusing to adjust to the brand new regulation and, “The Division is open about its refusal.”
Kobach stated the division is utilizing “sex” and “gender” interchangeably in defending driver’s license modifications, however Smith stated that’s not the case. Sex refers to biology and gender to an identification influenced by societal expectations and practices.
The new Kansas regulation borrows language from a proposal from a number of nationwide anti-transgender organizations. Smith stated the language was not “tailored to the specifics of Kansas law” and didn’t tackle the “historical use of ‘gender’ as an identity marker for driver’s licenses.”
“It is a poorly written law,” stated Adam Kellogg, a 20-year-old transgender University of Kansas scholar who testified in opposition to anti-trans laws this 12 months. “It was meant to be hateful.”
Kobach stated the brand new regulation additionally applies to beginning certificates, however the settlement of a 2018 federal lawsuit over a earlier no-changes coverage requires the state to permit modifications in these paperwork. A federal decide’s order imposing it stays in impact. More than 900 individuals have modified their beginning certificates since July 2019, the state says.
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