Lawsuit over Kansas IDs can be a ‘morass’ if transgender individuals intervene, legal professional normal says

TOPEKA, Kan. — Allowing transgender Kansas residents to intervene in a lawsuit that seeks to power the state to record the intercourse they had been assigned at start on their driver’s licenses would create a authorized “morass,” the state’s Republican legal professional normal argued in a brand new courtroom submitting.

Attorney General Kris Kobach additionally contends in a submitting made public Wednesday that the 5 transgender individuals attempting to intervene wouldn’t have a considerable curiosity within the lawsuit’s final result. Kobach needs to maintain the main focus of the case on his argument {that a} new state regulation that rolled again transgender rights as of July 1 bars the state from altering transgender individuals’s driver’s licenses to replicate their gender identities.

Kobach filed the lawsuit final month towards two prime officers within the Kansas Department of Revenue, which points driver’s licenses. The lawsuit got here after Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly introduced that folks may proceed to have their driver’s licenses modified regardless of the brand new regulation, which defines female and male below any state regulation because the intercourse assigned to an individual at start. The Republican-controlled Legislature overrode Kelly’s veto and enacted it.

District Judge Theresa Watson has an Aug. 16 listening to set in Shawnee County, house to the state capital of Topeka, on the transgender individuals’s request to intervene. Watson already has directed the division to not change transgender individuals’s licenses whereas the lawsuit strikes ahead, and that order is to stay in place till no less than Nov. 1. Kansas is amongst just a few states that don’t enable such modifications, together with Montana, Oklahoma and Tennessee.

The 5 transgender people are represented by the American Civil Liberties Union and argue that barring modifications within the intercourse listings on driver’s licenses violates their rights below the Kansas Constitution.

Kobach argued in his submitting, dated Tuesday, “That is not the issue in this case.” Instead, he mentioned, the query is just whether or not the Department of Revenue is complying with the brand new regulation.

“Thus, whatever grievances third parties may have … such matters are simply not relevant,” Kobach wrote.

Kobach additionally argued that if the transgender individuals intervene and lift constitutional points, he can be obligated because the state’s prime lawyer to defend the Department of Revenue towards these claims – in his personal lawsuit.

“Allowing intervention will create a procedural morass,” he wrote.

Attorneys representing the Department of Revenue towards Kobach’s lawsuit help the transgender individuals’s request and argued in their very own submitting Tuesday that permitting them to intervene would promote “judicial economy.” The legal professionals mentioned the transgender residents are prone to file a separate lawsuit if their request is denied.

Sharon Brett, authorized director for the ACLU of Kansas, mentioned in a press release that as a result of Kobach’s interpretation of the brand new regulation conflicts with transgender individuals’s rights, “Their voices must be heard.”

“It is telling that Mr. Kobach is going to great lengths to prevent the voices of transgender Kansans from being heard in this case,” she added.