Kansas demands trans people hand over their driving licenses as part of ‘Bathroom Bounty’

Late last week, on February 26, the state of Kansas dealt its most heinous blow yet to trans people. The new law is titled ‘House Substitute for Senate Bill 244 (HSB244). However, it’s also become known as the ‘Bathroom Bounty’.

The bill immediately invalidated state-issued driver’s licenses, identification cards, and birth certificates if they didn’t reflect the holder’s sex as assigned at birth.

As part of that legislature, the Kansas Department of Revenue sent out letters to 1700 trans people across the state. The notice demanded the immediate surrender of driving licenses, with no grace period. Essentially, Kansas is holding legal permission to drive hostage to enforce trans people’s submission.

‘Far beyond just transportation’

HSB244’s sweeping legislature requires that trans people use according to their assigned sex. It also permits any citizen to sue individual trans people for as much as $1,000 if they see them in the bathroom corresponding to their gender – hence the moniker.

Kansas governor Laura Kelly, a Democrat, originally vetoed HSB244 for being poorly written. However, legislators overruled the veto to push the bill through.

The lack of grace period means that the law comes into effect immediately. Any trans or non-binary person driving with their correct license is at risk of a $1000 fine and 6 months in jail. Kansas already requires that inmates are jailed according to their sex assigned at birth.

Three researchers in anti-trans discrimination wrote for the Conversation about the far-reaching effects of the bill:

without a valid driver’s license, many trans and nonbinary people will be unable to get to work, attend classes, pick up their children, visit the doctor, see friends or go to the grocery store. Trans and nonbinary people who need to drive with an invalid license risk fines and jail time, where they would be housed according to their sex assigned at birth.

Taking a train or bus is not a solution that would work for many people. Almost half of the U.S. population does not have access to public transportation, and for those who do, it is often poorly maintained, sparse or unreliable. […]

The effects of invalidating someone’s legal documents goes far beyond just transportation. Legal IDs are required to access health care, obtain housing, have a job, vote, attend college, access financial assistance or even purchase cold medicine at a pharmacy.

Legal challenge

Two anonymous trans men are currently challenging HSB244 in the District Court of Douglas County. Civil rights organisation the American Civil Liberties Union is representing them, along with law firm Ballard Spahr.

They’re arguing that the bill violates state protections for privacy, equality under the law, personal autonomy, due process, and freedom of speech. Monica Bennett, Kansas ACLU legal director, stated that:

This legislation is a direct attack on the dignity and humanity of transgender Kansans.It undermines our state’s strong constitutional protections against government overreach and persecution.

Likewise, Harper Seldin – a senior staff attorney for the ACLU’s LGBTQ & HIV Rights Project – added:

SB 244 is a cruel and craven threat to public safety all in the name of fostering fear, division, and paranoia. The invalidation of state-issued IDs threatens to out transgender people against their will every time they apply for a job, rent an apartment, or interact with police. Taken as a whole, SB 244 is a transparent attempt to deny transgender people autonomy over their own identities and push them out of public life altogether.

Escalating Trump administration policy

HSB244 is an escalation of the Trump administration’s wider anti-trans policymaking. Trans-focussed independent journalist Erin in the Morning explained that:

The Trump administration has barred transgender Americans from obtaining passports that reflect their gender identity, a policy the Supreme Court allowed to take effect in November. The Social Security Administration has similarly stopped permitting gender marker updates. At the state level, Florida, Texas, Indiana, and other states have moved to block gender marker changes on driver’s licenses or birth certificates. But Kansas appears to be the first state to go further than simply blocking future changes—it is actively invalidating previously issued documents and demanding their surrender.

Meanwhile, in the UK, our government is busy trying to institute its own bathroom ban for trans people. The legislation is currently in limbo because there is no legal way to tell whether or not a person is trans.

Any attempt to do so will, inevitably, also impact intersex people, butch lesbians, femme gays, and gender non-conformists of all types, leaving it open to legal challenge.

As Kansas has clearly demonstrated, the ‘solution’ to this problem will necessarily involve stripping a minority group of their identity documents. If that sounds to you like fascism, it’s because it is bloody fascism.

Featured image via the Canary