According to civil rights lawyers, a Kansas judge may overturn her decision to forbid the state from issuing new pilot’s licenses to transgender individuals with altered female markers.
Attorney General Kris Kobach’s July request for a momentary order to maintain preventing identity marker changes will be heard in Shawnee County District Court in January thanks to the ACLU of Kansas ‘ new Monday processing.
According to the ACLU, Judge Teresa Watson should “allow KDOR to begin issuing driver’s licenses to trans Kansas with a sex symbol that corresponds with the female they live when, are perceived as and know themselves to get.” This is in response to their request. All trans Kansas residents and intervenors have the right to live without interference that is illegal or illegal.
Five transsexual Kansans, all of whom have received gender-affirming health care, are represented by the ACLU. The attorneys cited negative effects that ended after transgender people were able to obtain IDs that reflected their gender identity, such as increased and intrusive airport security attention.
Republican governor Kobach filed a lawsuit in July to halt the Kansas Department of Income. preventing Laura Kelly’s management from implementing such modifications. He cited Senate Bill 180, a new law that completely defines gender for authorities records and was passed by the GOP-led Legislature over Kelly’s veto.
The Revenue Department is prohibited from changing gender markers for trans Kansans under a temporary restraining order that Watson has previously issued. Due to that purchase, credit card problems, such as voting ID during this month’s election, were still true.
Initially, it was n’t intended for the temporary restraining order to remain in effect for this long. After one expansion was agreed upon by the parties, Watson agreed to Kobach’s ask for a second one because his office claimed he needed more time to get ready for the ACLU to argue for transgender people.
Since then, the ACLU has claimed that identification has been hampered by the attorney general’s office.
The ACLU stated that” The Court is aware of the significant obstacles Petitioner attempted to use to avoid producing records requested via discovery.”
Do pilot’s licenses fall under SB 180?
The ACLU contends that SB 180, which makes no mention of driver’s licenses, does not use to the laws governing them because they were most recently updated in Senate Bill 9. Senators” may simply have done so” if the Legislature had intended for SB 180 to formally override SB 9.
The ACLU claimed that by passing this concept of gender in SB 180, the government singled out transgender people for unfair treatment compared to those who are not. Petitioner ( Kobach ) contends that by passing SB 180, the legislature completely rewrote the state code to remove transgender people from the law, rather than debating the policy implications of adopting specific definitions of sex in specific statutory contexts.
The ACLU contends that the language does not apply to driver’s licenses, according to the creators of the design legislation that Kansas politicians adopted. They cite a document that Independent Women’s Voice created and distributed to the office of the attorney general that claims SB 180 not intended to have an impact on driving certificates.
They cite the congressional background and a dearth of backers to support the claim that there was any intention to sway driver’s licenses. The ACLU even cites a letter from Rep. Carrie Barth, R-Baden City, to Kobach in which she questioned whether the rules applied gender markers to pilot’s licenses as proof that “even the lawmakers who voted in favor of SB 180 did not necessarily view the act to apply to drivers.”
What was SB 180’s congressional goal?
SB 180 was primarily viewed as a bathroom act during parliamentary discussions.
According to the ACLU,” the parliamentary history shows that the obvious purpose of the law was to discriminate against transgender persons, based on a stated wish to exclude them from open spaces like bathroom or locker areas.”
The” Women’s Bill of Rights” was the name given to the law by the government.
The ACLU claimed that SB 180 operates only by discriminating against transgender people, despite its title’s apparent attempt to protect people. According to the Kansas Constitution, the government cannot do this.
Kobach contends that the court may not overturn the law, despite the ACLU’s claim that it is illegal and cites the historic Hodes abortion rights case as evidence of the right to personal autonomy.
According to Kobach,” a supermajority of the Kansas Legislature has determined that it is in the common interest to have immutable biological sex included in both the pilot’s license and other information pieces.” As far as the Court is concerned, this does put an end to the dispute. It is illegal for either the court or the executive branch to question the wisdom of a decision once it has been passed into law. The Legislature has made a final decision regarding how to best serve the public attention.
Does this have an effect on regulation protection?
Kobach had argued that allowing female symbol changes would harm law enforcement “irreparably.”
According to Kobach,” False information was certainly influence whether a law enforcement officer would be able to accurately identify someone.” In the case of arrest warrants, the negative effects are most apparent because a mismatch between the sex on the warrant and identification may enable the wanted person to flee. However, it might also cause issues with, say, jail or prison activities.
Kobach “produced no proof that any trans people in Kansas has always eluded imprisonment or caused damage to law enforcement officers because their driver’s license listed their gender rather than their sex assigned at birth,” according to the ACLU.
That includes Shawnee County Sheriff Brian Hill’s testimony comment that he had no distinct instances of law enforcement running into problems when speaking with a transgender people.
Records from the discovery reveal that Lt. Theron Chaulk of the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office “attempted to arouse information… to support his claims” on behalf of Kobach. According to the ACLU, Chaulk wrote an email to assistant attorney general Jesse Burris stating that” I have spoken to every officer in my section and that there are currently no instances of gender on driver’s licenses affecting any call for company.”
According to the ACLU, Kobach’s individual testimony refuted his claims that jails were affected by altered female markers.
According to the papers, Maj. Rick Newson of the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office requested that the oath be edited because it was false. They claimed that records show the attorney general ‘ business drafted the document for him about using drivers ‘ licenses in the prison booking method.
The National Prison Rape Elimination Act would be violated, according to the ACLU, if Kobach’s position on how SB 180 applies to prison is adopted.
According to the ACLU, jails would be in direct violation of federal law and run the risk of losing some of their federal funding if they did what the Petioner ( Kobach ) suggests they do, which is to look at a person’s driving record to determine their sex at birth and then house them in accordance with that gender. ” If placed in a housing unit that matches their sexual assigned at birth, but not their gender identity and identity presentation,” transgender people would also be at increased risk for sexual victimization.
Kobach did n’t offer any support for his public health claim.
Kobach asserted in court documents that” a incompatibility between the recorded and the actual gender of a donation was deleteriously change outcomes for the victim” and result in “botched tissue transplants,” noting that pilot’s licenses are used to indicate that someone is an organ donor.
When asked to back up that assertion, he appears to have done so.
The ACLU wrote,” Grasping at straws, Petitioner ( Kobach ) earlier raised the fanciful specter to this Court that KDOR’s gender marker policy could harm public health by causing unsuccessful organ transplant operations.” ” When asked to back this up via finding, petitioner offered absolutely no evidence to support this claim that the identity marker on a person’s driving license has any bearing on organ donation.” The applicant finally renounced any rely on this reported government interest during the course of this litigation on November 6, 2023.
According to ACLU, SB 180 hurts transgender individuals.
The ACLU argued that it is detrimental to their wellbeing and demonstrates that they are transgender to anyone who sees their license, violently journey them and putting them at risk of emotional problems and severe personal harm.
According to the ACLU, 20-year-old University of Kansas student Adam Kellogg does n’t want to be forced to admit that he is transgender when visiting the bank, interacting with the police, renting a car, casting his vote, or going into government buildings.
According to the ACLU, Kathryn Redman, a 62-year-old trans woman from Johnson County and one of the five persons they represent, used to experience harassment because the male sex symbol did not match her presence.
When she flew with an ID that displayed a female female marker, the TSA would ask her “invasive questions,” “pat downs of the pelvic region of her body,” and “force her to reveal her transgender identity.” According to the ACLU, that stopped after receiving a new ID that displayed the sex symbol of women.
The ACLU argued that it is improper for the government to require transgender people to carry licenses with gender markers that reveal the sex that is assigned to them at beginning just because the legislature has ruled that such individuals are no female or male in order to advance the interest in “linguistic clarity.” There is just no justification for mandating that transgender people carry a pilot’s license that discloses the sex they were given at birth and their gender apart from an animosity that would disadvantage them specifically.
The Topeka Capital-Journal’s capitol writer is Jason Alatidd. You can message him at jalatidd@gannett.com. Keep up with him on X @Jason_Alatidd.
