A rule governing what sex is listed on a person’s driver’s license is being challenged by the ACLU of Tennessee, which says the policy discriminates against transgender people.
The civil rights organization sued the state department that issues driver’s licenses on behalf of a Monroe County woman Tuesday, asking the court to block the department’s rule that keeps transgender people from updating their driver’s licenses to reflect their gender identities.
The woman, identified in the lawsuit by the pseudonym Jane Doe, is a transgender woman, meaning she identifies as a woman but her sex was designated as male at birth, the lawsuit states. Unable to change the gender marker on her driver’s license, she is forced to disclose her transgender status each time she hands her driver’s license to a third party, the lawsuit states.
“All of us, including trans people, need access to accurate identification as it is an important part of daily life,” Doe, the plaintiff, said in a news release from the ACLU. “It allows Tennesseans to open bank accounts, enroll in school, start new jobs, vote and travel. Denying this right to trans people is cruel, discriminatory, and an effort to deny us the freedom to be ourselves.”
The Tennessee General Assembly passed a law in April 2023 defining a person’s sex based on “immutable” physical and genetic characteristics at birth. On July 1, 2023, the Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security implemented the policy that it would not change driver’s license gender markers to something different than the sex given on a person’s original birth certificate.
The ACLU says that rule did not go through the appropriate procedures required for creating a new rule under state law.
Additionally, the organization alleges the rule violates a host of provisions of the Tennessee Constitution, including its client’s rights to privacy, freedom of speech, equal protection and procedural due process. Lucas Cameron-Vaughn, an ACLU staff attorney on the case, said the organization plans to file a motion soon asking the judge to block the rule while the case is working through the court.
Cameron-Vaughn said a successful result in the case would “send a message to other transgender people in the state that they are worthy of dignity.”
An estimated 30,800 Tennessee residents are transgender, according to statistics listed in the ACLU’s complaint. Twenty-two percent of respondents to the 2022 U.S. Trans Survey conducted by the National Center for Transgender Equality “reported being verbally harassed, assaulted, asked to leave a location, or denied services when they have shown someone an ID with a name or sex marker that did not match their presentation,” the complaint states.
Similar challenges are playing out in courts in other states. On March 11, a Kansas judge ruled that the state isn’t violating transgender peoples’ rights under the Kansas constitution by not changing their driver’s licenses to match their gender identities.
Evan Mealins is the justice reporter for The Tennessean. Contact him at [email protected] or follow him on X, formerly known as Twitter, @EvanMealins.
