Judge says Kansas shouldn't keep changing trans people's birth certificates due to new state law

Source: Associated Press

Judge says Kansas shouldn’t keep changing trans people’s birth certificates due to new state law

BY JOHN HANNA AND JOSH FUNK
Updated 5:58 PM EDT, August 31, 2023

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — A federal judge ruled Thursday that Kansas officials are not required to keep changing transgender people’s birth certificates so the documents reflect their gender identities.

U.S. District Judge Daniel Crabtree approved Republican state Attorney General Kris Kobach’s request to block the changes because of a new state law rolling back trans rights. Kansas joins Montana, Oklahoma and Tennessee in barring such birth certificate changes.

Kansas is for now also among a few states that don’t let trans people change their driver’s licenses to reflect their gender identities. That’s because of a separate state-court lawsuit Kobach filed last month. Both efforts are responses to the new state law, which took effect July 1.

The law defines male and female as the sex assigned at birth, based on a person’s “biological reproductive system,” applying those definitions to any other state law or regulation. The Republican-controlled Legislature enacted it over Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly’s veto, but she announced shortly before it took effect that birth certificate changes would continue, citing opinions from attorneys in her administration that they could.

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Read more: https://apnews.com/article/kansas-transgender-birth-certificates-b5f2ba8fa844be437c074abe86b99966