Kansas to revoke driver's licenses of trans people, replacing them with IDs meant to out them

The government of Kansas is making it clear that it intends to make its trans population as distinct from the cis population as it can make them. 

By Jane Migliara Brigham

Earlier today, Jan. 28, the Kansas house overwhelmingly passed a bill to revoke the drivers licenses of trans people in the state.  The bill is headed to the senate, where it is expected to be passed with a supermajority of the votes.  While it will probably be vetoed by the state’s Democratic Governor, there is the probable risk of the veto being overridden, as both of the state’s legislative chambers have Republican supermajorities.

The bill orders the Director of the Kansas Department of Revenue (which oversees the granting of driver’s licenses) to identify all people granted a driver’s license with a gender marker that does not correspond to the sex they were assigned at birth, a stipulation that applies almost exclusively to trans people.  It then orders that these licenses be invalidated, ordering the bearers to surrender their old licenses, at which time they will be provided a new license that has the wrong gender marker.

What is notable is the requirement that the old ID be handed in as a requirement for a new one.  This is far from standard, as old IDs are rarely forced to be handed in as a requirement for new IDs.  In most cases, the government marks down that the old ID has expired early, but does not bother collecting and destroying old IDs, instead relying on people to not use them.

That the Kansas government is not following this standard procedure implies that they do not expect trans people to surrender their IDs unless they are coerced into doing so. 

Since driver’s licenses are used as general purpose IDs in the United States, the inability to get accurate driver’s licenses means an inability to have any identification that is both accurate and which keeps the bearer safe from discrimination.  

By doing this, the Kansas government is forcing trans people to choose between complying with these discriminatory laws and surrendering documents which they can use to keep themselves safe, and defying the new law in order to hold on to their accurate IDs.

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This would be the most extreme anti-trans law enacted since the days of anti-crossdressing laws.  If enacted, this would be the single most extreme bureaucratic attack on trans people in the United States in the entire 21th century.  

By not just barring trans people from obtaining accurate IDs, but actively revoking those accurate IDs which the state has already issued, the government of Kansas is making it clear that it intends to make its trans population as distinct from the cis population as it can make them.  

The bill was approved alongside another bill allowing for private citizens to sue trans people for using public bathrooms that do not align with their sex assigned at birth.