Law demanding IDs must match ‘sex at birth’ invalidated the driver’s licenses of about 1,700 trans people in the state
Two transgender men are suing Kansas over a new law that invalidated their driver’s licenses and about 1,700 others for reflecting people’s gender identities and not their sex assigned at birth, arguing that the measure is “dehumanizing”.
The men filed their case Thursday, the same day the law took effect, and argue that it violates rights to privacy, personal autonomy and due legal process guaranteed by the Kansas state constitution. The men also are challenging the law’s tough, new enforcement provisions for the state’s three-year-old policy of barring transgender people from using public restrooms or other single-sex facilities associated with their gender identities.
The men are asking Catherine Theisen, Douglas county’s district judge, to block the law, which also invalidated about 1,800 transgender people’s birth certificates. The county is home to the main University of Kansas campus and is a liberal bastion in a generally conservative state.
“The Kansas constitution prohibits the Kansas legislature’s targeting of transgender individuals for this discriminatory and dehumanizing treatment,” the lawsuit says.
