Why is Kansas ban on transgender driver's licenses so urgent? | Opinion
Attorney General Kris Kobach wants to make it illegal for transgender Kansans to get driver’s licenses that reflect their gender identities. And he wants to do it right now — or soon at any rate.
The problem: The Kansas Legislature doesn’t officially come back into session until January.
The solution: Call the Legislature into a special session before then, in order to pass his law. There’s no time to waste, apparently.
Which, as it happens, suits the GOP leadership of the Legislature just fine. They’ve been trying to drum up support for a special session that would let them redraw the Kansas congressional map to nab the seat now held by Rep. Sharice Davids, a Democrat, and — lo and behold! — Kobach has just given them another reason to do the thing they already wanted to do.
Strike that. It’s not just another reason. It’s the bigger, more compelling, more urgent reason.
“Attorney General Kobach has urgently requested that the Legislature call a special session,” Senate President Ty Masterson and House Speaker Dan Hawkins said in identical letters to their colleagues, “to address an issue that he considers even more important than redistricting.”
And, well, that’s nonsense.
Only 380 out of 9 million cards issued
Some background: In 2023, the Legislature passed a law requiring the state’s vital statistics to recognize a person’s biological sex at birth.
But in June, a three-judge panel of the Kansas Court of Appeals found the state would suffer no harm by allowing transgender Kansans to use their gender identities on their driver’s license. And last week, the Kansas Supreme Court denied Kobach’s request to hear his appeal of that ruling. Kansans can start applying to change their gender markers this week.
Which is why Kobach wants the Legislature to pass a new law.
One interesting fact popped up during the judicial process, though. The Kansas Department of Revenue has been letting transgender Kansans change the gender marker on their licenses since 2007. Between 2011 and 2022, roughly 380 Kansans did so — about 0.004% of the 9 million cards that were issued.
That’s all.
So even if you think letting Kansans drive while transgender is a problem — I don’t — it’s still difficult to make the case that this is an issue worthy of urgent state action, of calling our part-time Legislature back to work to do something right this second.
Culture war to distract from redistricting?
We’re left with two choices, then, when it comes to assessing this move by Kobach, Masterson and Hawkins.
The first is that their priorities are wildly out of whack, constantly on the hunt for a sledgehammer they can use to swat a fly and thus giving lie to their “small government” declamations along the way. Maybe that’s the case: Remember when Kobach upended the state’s voter laws in order to solve the all-but-non-existent problem of foreigners voting in Kansas elections? And remember how he lost that case in court?
He does have a pattern, doesn’t he?
The second — and, I think, more likely — possibility is that Kansas Republicans are waving the shiny keys of America’s culture wars to distract voters, using the hot-button issue of gender identity to create both momentum for and distraction from their efforts to redraw the state’s congressional map in a way that functionally disenfranchises thousands of Kansas Democrats.
The GOP penchant for culture war rabble-rousing is a pattern, too.
My own preference would be to let transgender people live their lives in peace. It’s easy to see how Kobach’s preferred solution would cause more problems than it ostensibly solves: Imagine being a (say) trans man who has to explain to an inquiring police officer why your identity card says you’re a woman.
Who wants to invite that kind of scrutiny for trying to live your life?
Then again, creating that discomfort for transgender Kansans seems to be the point.
You have to ask: Is that point — ugly as it is — important enough that the Kansas Legislature must rush into action now? Kobach, Masterson and Hawkins say they think so. Do Kansans agree?
