Kansas Republicans are pulling some seriously garbage moves in the state legislature. The Sunflower State was already pretty far in the process of making itself inhospitable to transgender folks, and now, because of a judge’s recent order to push forward a bigoted new law that’s been at the center of a right vs. left battle for control, it will go one step further.
Most recently, after Kansas Republican Attorney General Kris Kobach filed a lawsuit asking a judge to force a highly contested, massively inhumane anti-trans law to take effect. The state’s Democratic leadership has been fighting it tooth and nail but now District Judge Teresa Watson has ordered the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles to move forward with the anti-trans law and begin to only list an individual’s sex on their driver’s licenses as the one they were assigned at birth. Some Republican voices are saying the law dictates that even licenses already given to transgender people that matched their gender identities would be recalled and reissued.
There has been a lot of push and pull involved in making this order, enough to lead both sides of the issue to think the original law was badly drafted. The original law, which took effect July 1, defines an individual’s “sex” as their “biological reproductive system” that was assigned at birth and says that definition should be used in any government context, like a government ID. Incidentally, it is also one of the nation’s most sweeping anti-trans laws, as it also forces people to use the bathroom, locker room, etc., that matches their sex assigned at birth.
The state’s Democratic governor, Laura Kelly, vetoed the bill when it first came to her desk. But the Republican-led legislature was able to force it through. Following the veto’s override, the State Speaker of the House, Republican Dan Hawkins, said he was “just giddy,” according to reporting from the Associated Press. And I really wonder in the face of such rhetoric, who is receiving any real benefit with the Republicans win here? What kind of monsters admit it makes them “giddy” to deny thousands of people the essential validation (not to mention legal protections) of listing their true gender on their government documents?
After Ted Smith, an attorney for the Department of Revenue, announced that an existing law regarding what appears on driver’s licenses overrides the new law, Governor Kelly announced that the DMV would continue allowing trans individuals to make changes according to their gender identities. That brings us to Kobach’s suit, and the judge’s order to stick to biological sex. The order runs out on July 24 but could be extended.
The existing Kansas driver’s license law says a person must have their “gender” listed on their driver’s license, even though the listing appears under the term “sex” on the actual license. On one side of the issue, Kobach is arguing that the terms “gender” and “sex” are being used interchangeably. But generally, sex is meant as biology, and gender is meant as cultural expression, and that’s what opponents of the new law argue.
“It is a poorly written law,” said Adam Kellogg, a 20-year-old transgender University of Kansas student who spoke to PBS. “It was meant to be hateful.” Driver’s licenses that don’t match a person’s gender expression can only serve to cause confusion and harassment out in the world. All this pushing, and the lawsuit, and the far-right’s literal giddiness at making Kansas such a horrible place for trans people really underscores the fact that it was never about protecting (cis) women and children. It’s always just been about hate. All the arguments about protecting women in vulnerable spaces really don’t apply here. There’s nothing this law could be about but erasing trans people from existence.
(featured image: AlxeyPnferov/Getty Images)
