The New Kansas Law
By: Nitzaliah Festinger
Recently, on February 26th, the Senate bill 244 came into effect in Kansas. This law invalidated the ID’s of about 1,700 trans Kansas citizens.
The morning of February 26th, trans people all over Kansas received letters in the mail informing them their driver’s licenses and birth certificates were invalid. Anyone who has changed their gender marker was expected to surrender their license, apply for new identification with their birth sex, and refrain from driving until they got the new ID. There was no grace period, no salary compensation, no warnings. They were also informed that if anyone was caught driving with a license with a gender marker differing from their birth sex, they would receive a class B misdemeanor. That’s up to six months in jail and a $1,000 fine.
Additionally, SB 244 restricts people from using bathrooms that do not correlate with their birth gender, and even goes as far to give citizens the ability to sue people for being in “the wrong bathroom”.
The trans community, especially in Kansas, is understandably very upset about this. Getting a new ID could take no less than 2-3 weeks. Daniel Doe and Mathew Moe, of The American Civil Liberties Union, filed a lawsuit against the state of Kansas claiming SB 244 was unconstitutional, and violated the Kansas Constitution’s protections of personal autonomy, privacy, equality under law, due process, and freedom of speech. This case was filed the day SB 244 came into action. So far the lawsuit hasn’t had an effect on the situation, but there could be more to come.
Sources: