Forced Outing Becomes Law in Kansas
Trans people in Kansas have no options for changing their documents to reflect the gender they’re living as, endangering them and making normal life impossible.
by Evan Urquhart
The rollback of human rights for trans people is marching on, with trans people in Kansas losing all access to updated records, forcing their outing on all official documentation in the state. A decision by the Kansas Department of Health and the Environment states that a state law defining sex as assigned at birth prevents the state from allowing trans residents to update their gender on their birth certificates. Until recently, a court settlement had been in effect that required Kansas to allow trans residents to change their birth certificates, but the new law has upset the balance and will require the court battle to start afresh.
In right-wing media the Washington Examiner and the Daily Wire both ran brief stories about the change, but the general tone on the right is muted, following a pattern where stories hype sensational negative stories relating to trans people but show little interest in the victories of the ongoing hate campaign. Mainstream coverage has been more widespread with stories in the Associated Press (linked above), PBS, ABC, Forbes, and many others.
screenshot from the Daily Wire
A separate lawsuit, filed by extreme anti-trans attorney general Kris Kobach, also recently stopped Kansans from changing the gender marker on their drivers licenses. Taken together, this creates a forced outing regime where trans people who wish to fly under the radar cannot exist in Kansas without being outed as transgender to anyone who sees their IDs. This in turn enables increased discrimination in housing, employment, and by police, all situations where legal IDs are required and an incongruity between an ID and a person’s appearance will mark that person as trans.
The loss of rights in the transgender community in the U. S. has been a slow-moving disaster taking place over the last 2 or 3 years. Currently, a patchwork of laws, lawsuits, and court orders makes the exact situation for trans individuals highly contingent on their state and even local governments, with no consistent protection for the constitutional or human rights of trans individuals being enforced.