Kansas conservative attorney general announced a law to revert past gender changes in transgender individuals’ birth certificates and driver’s licenses.
Attorney General Kris Kobach has stated that the records of students in public schools must indicate the gender they were assigned at birth, regardless of whether teachers and staff acknowledge their gender identities.
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The office of Democratic Governor Laura Kelly has expressed disagreement with Kobach’s views, although it has not specified whether state agencies under the governor’s authority will comply or defy them, potentially leading to a legal dispute. In 2019, a federal judge mandated that Kansas allow transgender individuals to change their birth certificates as a resolution to a lawsuit challenging a policy prohibiting such changes.
Omar Gonzalez-Pagan, an attorney for Lambda Legal, which represented four Kansas residents, remarked, The attorney general must be off his rocker. This was a collection of exaggerated statements by an attorney general engaging in political maneuvering.
A formal yet non-binding legal opinion released by Kobach on Monday, along with his statements during a press conference at the Statehouse, affirmed that if fully enforced, the new law would legally negate the gender identities of transgender individuals.
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Opponents had anticipated this outcome prior to the law’s passage by the Republican-controlled Legislature despite Kelly’s veto, although the debate largely revolved around preventing transgender individuals from using facilities that align with their gender identities.
According to the new law, a person’s sex is determined by their biological reproductive system at birth, which can conflict with their gender identity. Females are defined as having a system developed to produce ova, while males are defined as having a system developed to fertilize those ova.
The law argues that important governmental objectives such as protecting people’s health, safety, and privacy justify the segregation of spaces based on sex.
The state has not provided data on the number of Kansas residents who have changed the gender on their birth certificates or driver’s licenses in the past four years. Kobach estimated the number of changed birth certificates to be over 100. The Kelly administration has not disclosed its response to the law.
Adam Kellogg, a 20-year-old transgender student at the University of Kansas, warned that if Kobach’s views are adopted by the state, transgender individuals seeking to verify their identities would encounter conflicts between their documents and gender identities, leading to complicated situations.
Kellogg expressed concern that transgender individuals may be compelled to reveal their identities, thus endangering their safety.
