TOPEKA, Kan. — The Kansas company that points driver’s licenses is combating a state-court decide’s order that bans the company from altering the intercourse itemizing on transgender individuals’s licenses.
The Kansas Department of Revenue tried in court docket Wednesday to steer District Judge Teresa Watson to raise her ban on altering licenses to replicate trans individuals’s gender identities. The order is about to run out July 24, though the decide can prolong it. The division requested Watson to revoke it, and she or he mentioned she would rule on that request later within the day.
The state’s Republican lawyer basic, Kris Kobach, has sued the pinnacle of the Department of Revenue and its motorized vehicle division. Kobach argues {that a} new anti-transgender rights regulation, which took impact July 1, prevents trans individuals from altering their driver’s licenses. But the division stored making the modifications – till Monday’s order – according to an announcement from Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly.
The division contends that the brand new regulation conflicts with an older one dealing particularly with driver’s licenses.
Department lawyer Ted Smith informed Watson that the company is sure by the older regulation on driver’s licenses and never “the attorney general’s legal theories.” The decide had a Zoom listening to Wednesday from Shawnee County, dwelling to the state capital of Topeka.
Republican legislators enacted the brand new Kansas regulation over Kelly’s veto. It defines female and male primarily based on an individual’s intercourse assigned at start for “any” state regulation or regulation, though it doesn’t particularly point out driver’s licenses. It prevents authorized recognition of transgender individuals’s gender identities.
“The violation of the statute itself is an injury to the state,” Kobach mentioned through the listening to.
Kansas is one in every of just a few states that don’t permit transgender individuals to alter the intercourse listed on their driver’s license. Montana and Tennessee additionally bar modifications for transgender individuals, however their legal guidelines deal particularly with driver’s licenses.
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