Kansas invalidates more than 1,000 transgender residents’ driver’s licenses, birth certificates

A Kansas law invalidating the driver’s licenses and birth certificates of transgender residents who changed their gender on the documents took effect Thursday.

The legislation, Senate Bill 244, requires all Kansans to identify with the same gender as their birth sex on official state documents. That impacts more than 1,000 people in the state, according to Reuters. 

Under the law, Kansans cannot make changes to their gender on driver’s licenses and birth certificates going forward. Those who need new licenses must pay a fee of no more than $8, to be set by state Secretary of Revenue Mark Burghart. 

Transgender Kansans must also use restrooms, locker rooms, changing rooms and shower rooms in government buildings that correspond to their birth sex. 

Individuals who violate the law twice will face a civil penalty of $1,000, while those who commit a third or subsequent violation will be charged with a class B misdemeanor. Government entities in violation will be penalized $25,000 for first infractions and $125,000 for each subsequent infraction. 

The GOP-led Kansas Legislature passed the bill last month. While Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly (D) vetoed it, the Legislature overrode that veto earlier this month. 

When that occurred, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Kansas denounced the legislation as “intrusive” and an attack on transgender Kansans. 

“This bill is about forcing people into the wrong bathrooms and opening up all Kansans to scrutiny and gender policing by strangers,” said Logan DeMond, ACLU of Kansas policy director, in a release. “Bathroom bans are grounded in prejudice and misinformation, and they don’t actually make anyone safer.”

Harper Seldin, a senior staff attorney with the LGBTQ and HIV Project at the ACLU, told Reuters that the organization plans on filing a legal challenge to the law by the end of Friday.

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