XPost: alt.fan.states.kansas, talk.politics.guns, sac.politics   
   XPost: or.politics, alt.transgendered   
   From: noreply@mixmin.net   
      
   Driver's licenses and birth certificates for more than 1,000 transgender   
   Americans living in Kansas are now invalid, after a state law went into   
   effect Feb. 26 banning the changes of sex markers on documents to align   
   with gender identity and reversing previous changes.   
      
   The law gives no defined grace period, which state officials have said   
   means any trans person who previously legally changed the marker will   
   immediately have invalid documents, opening them up to possible   
   penalties for driving with an invalid license, for example.   
      
   Senate Bill 244 was vetoed by Gov. Laura Kelly, a Democrat, but the veto   
   was then overridden by Republican supermajorities in the Kansas   
   legislature, allowing it to go into effect on Feb. 26, reported the   
   Topeka Capital-Journal, part of the USA TODAY Network.   
      
   Kansas joins Texas, Florida and Tennessee in prohibiting the updating of   
   gender markers on driver's licenses, according to a tracker by the   
   nonprofit Movement Advancement Project, which tracks LGBTQ-related laws   
   and policies. At least eight other states also ban changes to gender   
   markers on birth certificates for transgender people.   
      
   The new law makes Kansas the first state in the nation to retroactively   
   invalidate such driver's licenses that were legally obtained, said   
   Harper Seldin, a senior staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties   
   Union's LGBTQ & HIV Project.   
      
   The newly enacted law also bans transgender people from using bathrooms,   
   locker rooms and similar facilities in public or government buildings   
   that align with their gender identity. It adds financial penalties for   
   government entities, misdemeanor criminal charges against repeat   
   offenders and creation of a civil cause of action for an individual to   
   sue someone who used an opposite-sex bathroom.   
      
   The American Civil Liberties Union of Kansas said in a statement after   
   the veto was overridden that the law is "one of the most sweeping and   
   intrusive anti-trans bills in the nation." The ACLU plans to challenge   
   the law in state court by the end of the week, Seldin said.   
      
   "SB 244 is part of a trend of laws in Kansas and nationally that are   
   targeting transgender people with the intent to push us out of civil   
   society," Seldin told USA TODAY. "Laws like SB 244 are really a   
   dangerous escalation in the state trying to tell people how to live   
   their lives because of how the state sees gender and sex."   
      
   State Senate President Ty Masterson, a Republican, said the override of   
   Kelly's veto "restored sanity," and said the veto "would have forced our   
   mothers, sisters, wives and daughters to share their bathrooms with   
   biological men in government buildings."   
      
   Here's what the new law says   
   The law that went into effect on Feb. 26 includes multiple provisions   
   that have to do with identification documents and what spaces   
      
   The Kansas Department of Revenue's Division of Vehicles must discontinue   
   its practice of allowing gender marker changes for transgender people,   
   and reverse changes made in the past. The state registrar must "correct   
   any birth certificate records" issued by the Kansas Department of Health   
   and Environment's Office of Vital Statistics in which the listed sex   
   does not match the sex assigned at birth. Those certificates are now   
   invalidated. "Multiple-occupancy private spaces in public buildings" may   
   only be occupied by people of one sex. New criminal and civil penalties   
   are enacted for violations, and a new cause of action for anyone   
   "aggrieved" by a violation that invades their privacy is established.   
      
   Driver's licenses are immediately invalid, state official says   
   Gender marker changes on driver's licenses had been allowed for 16 years   
   before they were halted in summer 2023 amid litigation over the meaning   
   of another bill, Senate Bill 180. The courts allowed such changes to   
   resume in fall 2025 as the litigation continued. Attorney General Kris   
   Kobach and the state legislature responded with SB 244.   
      
   But the new law doesn't just ban gender marker changes going forward. It   
   also requires the revenue department to revert changes that were made in   
   the past. The law declares that any driver's license or other   
   state-issued identification card where the gender marker does not match   
      
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