TOPEKA, Kan. — A state-court decide on Monday ordered Kansas to cease permitting transgender folks to alter the itemizing for his or her intercourse on their driver’s licenses, forward of the primary listening to in a lawsuit filed by state’s Republican lawyer basic in opposition to the observe.

District Judge Teresa Watson issued the order three days after Attorney General Kris Kobach sued two officers in Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly’s administration over her announcement that the state’s motor autos division would proceed altering driver’s licenses for transgender folks in order that the intercourse itemizing matches their gender identities. Kobach contends {that a} regulation, which took impact on July 1, prevents such modifications and requires the state to reverse any earlier modifications in its data.

The order will keep in impact for up two weeks, though Watson can prolong it. But the decide’s transfer is important as a result of transgender folks have been in a position to change their driver’s licenses for 4 years, and nearly 400 folks have performed so.

That new Kansas regulation defines an individual’s intercourse as male or feminine, based mostly on the “biological reproductive system” recognized at delivery, making use of that definition to any state regulation or regulation. It additionally says that “important governmental objectives” of defending folks’s privateness, well being and security justify single-sex areas reminiscent of loos and locker rooms.

Kelly’s workplace has stated attorneys for the motor autos division’s father or mother company, the Kansas Department of Revenue, concluded that their observe of permitting modifications by transgender folks didn't violate the regulation.

Watson, a decide in Shawnee County, house to the state capital of Topeka, stated permitting the motor autos division to maintain making modifications for transgender folks would case “immediate and irreparable injury.”

“Compliance with state legal requirements for identifying license holders is a public safety concern,” Watson wrote.

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