Kansas’ state-court Judge Teresa Watson directed a cessation of sex identifier changes on driver’s licenses for transgender individuals on Monday, in anticipation of a hearing for a lawsuit brought forth by the state’s Republican attorney general.
The legal proceedings emerged three days subsequent to Attorney General Kris Kobach’s initiation of a suit against two members of Democratic Governor Laura Kelly’s administration.
The lawsuit was in response to Governor Kelly’s announcement that the state’s motor vehicles division would proceed in accommodating transgender individuals’ requests to alter the sex listed on their driver’s licenses to reflect their identified gender.
Kobach argues that this contradicts a law implemented on July 1st, which he says mandates the reversal of any previous amendments in state records.
While the order remains effective for up to two weeks, subject to extension at Judge Watson’s discretion, its significance lies in its potential to disrupt a practice that has been in place for four years and utilized by nearly 400 individuals to date.
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The newly introduced Kansas law determines a person’s sex as male or female based on the “biological reproductive system” identified at birth, extending this definition to all state law or regulation.
Furthermore, the law argues that protecting people’s privacy, health, and safety, crucial government objectives, validate the existence of single-sex facilities such as bathrooms and locker rooms.
Despite this, Governor Kelly’s office has maintained that legal counsel for the parent agency of the motor vehicles division, the Kansas Department of Revenue, has found no violation of the law in the continued changes for transgender people.
Judge Watson of Shawnee County, where the state capital Topeka is situated, claimed that permitting the motor vehicles division to continue alterations for transgender people could result in “immediate and irreparable injury.”
She emphasized that “compliance with state legal requirements for identifying license holders is a public safety concern.”
