TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Kansas’ Republican attorney general sued Friday to block transgender residents from changing gender on their driver’s license and to rebuke the Democratic governor for defying his interpretation of a new law.
Attorney General Kris Kobach has gone to state court hoping to get an order to stop Governor Laura Kelly and agencies under her control from stopping allowing changes to transgender people’s licenses. Kobach argues that a law that took effect Saturday prevents such changes and requires the state to reverse all previous changes to its records, including about 1,300 made in the past four years.
The new law defines a person’s sex as male or female, based on the “biological reproductive system” identified at birth, applying this definition to any state law or regulation. It also says “significant government objectives” of protecting people’s privacy, health and safety justify single-sex spaces such as bathrooms and locker rooms. Kansas is among at least 10 states with a law prohibiting transgender people from using facilities that conform to their gender identity. , although the new law does not provide for any enforcement mechanism.
But Kelly’s office announced last week that the state’s health department, which handles birth certificates, and the Division of Motor Vehicles, which issues driver’s licenses, will continue to allow transgender people in change the gender markers on these documents. His office said lawyers for his administration concluded that it did not violate the new law. Kelly is a strong supporter of LGBTQ+ rights and vetoed the measure, but the Republican-controlled legislature overruled it.
In response to this announcement, Kobach said, “She is violating her oath of office to uphold Kansas law.”
The lawsuit on Friday filed names as defendants two officials who oversee driver’s licenses. Part of the lawsuit reads, “The governor cannot choose which laws he will enforce and which he will ignore.”
His lawsuit seeks to force the governor to enforce the law as he sees it, but did not ask to stop changes to birth certificates. The rationale for limiting the trial to driver’s licenses was not immediately clear, nor was it immediately clear how quickly the district court in Shawnee County, home to the state capital, Topeka, would deal with the case. Judges have the ability to send the lawsuit to a lower court for investigation, which could delay a resolution for months.
The new Kansas law was one of a series of measures rolling back transgender rights enacted this year in state homes across the United States. But only a few states don’t allow transgender people to change their birth certificates. Last month, federal judges upheld the policies in Oklahoma and Tennessee, and a no-change rule in Montana is expected to face a legal challenge.
Kelly won his first term as governor in 2018 by defeating Kobach, then Kansas secretary of state. He staged a political comeback last year by winning the attorney general race as she won a second term, both by narrow margins.
The governor’s statements on the new law are at odds with descriptions of LGBTQ+ rights advocates before the Republican-controlled legislature passed it on Kelly’s veto. Lawyers predicted it would prevent transgender people from changing their driver’s license and amount to a legal “erasure” of their identity, which Kobach confirmed was the intent when he issued his legal opinion.
“For me to go into a bathroom and not have a marker that represents who I am, I was terrified. I was afraid of being accosted or harassed,” said Ty Goeke, a transgender resident of 37-year-old Topeka who changed both his birth certificate and driver’s license last month.
Goeke attended a transgender rights rally last week with his wife, Mallory, who carried a sign made from a toilet seat, calling for the new law to be “flushed”. Ty Goeke said he was sobbing with joy in a state health department office when he changed his birth certificate.
“Now that I have the right marker I feel a lot better, I feel more confident,” he said. “I feel good about myself.”
The legal wrangle is complicated by a 2018 federal lawsuit filed against Kansas Health Department officials by four transgender residents over a previous no-change birth certificate policy imposed by a Republican governor. This policy also hindered changes in driver’s licenses.
Kelly settled the federal lawsuit months after he took office in January 2019, and a federal judge issued an order to enforce the settlement that requires the state to authorize birth certificate changes. The order remains in effect.
Kobach asked the federal judge to overturn his order, but argues that the new state law supersedes it. Others disagree.
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