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Transgender Kansas residents have begun receiving letters from the state’s department of motor vehicles notifying them that their driver’s licenses will be invalid beginning Thursday, as a new law goes into effect that demands that forms of identification must now reflect the credential holder’s “sex at birth”.
The bill, known as SB 244, also bans transgender people from using bathrooms in public buildings that match their gender identity, and creates a sort of bounty hunter system, in which citizens can sue transgender people they encounter in restrooms for $1,000 in damages.
The state law was rushed through the state legislature using an expedited procedure known as “gut and go”. This means the text of one bill can be taken out and substituted for entirely new language or provisions, bypassing standard committee vetting and speeding through the voting process, which is legal in Kansas.
Governor Laura Kelly, a Democrat, vetoed the bill, arguing that SB 244 was “poorly drafted legislation”, but her veto was overridden by the state legislature’s Republican supermajority.
The legislation is the latest in a series of bills the Kansas legislature has passed in recent years limiting the rights of transgender residents, all over Kelly’s veto. The bill’s passage also coincides with increased national attacks on the rights of transgender Americans, including a national policy enforced by the Trump administration that blocks transgender and non-binary people from choosing passport sex markers aligning with their gender identity.
“Pursuant to the new law, if the gender/sex indication on the face of your current credential does not match your sex assigned at birth, you are directed to surrender your current credential to the Kansas Division of Vehicles,” the letter states.
The notification, sent by the Kansas department of revenue, under which the division of motor vehicles operates, also notes that the state legislature “did not include a grace period for updating credentials”, and anyone operating a vehicle without a valid credential “may be subject to additional penalties”.
Representative Abi Boatman, the only transgender member of the state legislature, said in an interview with the Guardian that she had been inundated with questions over the past few days from transgender Kansans who are trying to wrap their heads around the new law. “It has created a lot of confusion and a lot of anxiety,” she said.
“The Kansas legislature’s continued pursuit of culture war nonsense is detrimental to our state,” Boatman said. “We have been experiencing a ‘brain drain’ for years because people that grow up in Kansas don’t want to stay here.”
Anthony Alvarez, 21, is a trans student at the University of Kansas. Since 2023, he has had four different licenses, in part due to prior anti-trans legislation and legal battles over its validity.
“Since I started living as myself, I always knew that who I [am] was always going to be subject to legislation,” Alvarez said. “It was always going to be politicized.”
Alvarez spoke about the fear that comes with the passage of SB 244 for the trans community in Kansas, especially the bathroom bounty section. “It is uniquely draconian, and cruel to basically police trans Kansans using their neighbors,” he said.
As for the ID demands, he noted that whenever a trans person uses their license, “you are outing yourself to every single person that you have to give your ID to, whether that is a state official, or someone at a store or at the front desk of a dorm.”
A trans man based in Kansas, who requested anonymity for safety reasons, went to the DMV on Thursday morning to change his ID, right as the law went into effect.
“The guy didn’t even really seem prepared,” he said. “He didn’t know what to do. And he kept asking me what the change actually was.” After convening with his supervisor, the DMV worker made the gender marker change, and the trans man left with a new license – after paying a fee.
Boatman expects litigation to be filed challenging the constitutionality of SB 244. “I fully hope that it is struck down,” she said. “But in the interim, trans people are definitely in the crosshairs, and if they don’t feel safe in Kansas, I can’t blame them.”
