The Kansas attorney general filed a request in federal court late Friday which would end a requirement that allows trans-identifying people to change their birth certificates, according to the Associated Press (AP).
Republican Attorney General Kris Kobach is challenging a 2019 ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Daniel Crabtree, the AP reported. The judge’s ruling settled a lawsuit over a policy that allegedly restricted trans-identifying people from legally changing their names in order to obtain new driver’s licenses and Social Security cards.
Kobach seeks to block trans Kansans from changing birth certificates with new court filing https://t.co/JRZFKP1cBj
— The Kansas City Star (@KCStar) June 24, 2023
Kobach’s challenge could run into difficulties due to a 2020 U.S. Supreme Court decision which ruled federal employment discrimination laws apply to sexual orientation or gender identity, the AP reported.
Under former Republican governor Sam Brownback, Kansas had one of the strictest laws against changing gender on birth certificates, according to NBC News. That changed when Brownback’s successor, Democratic governor Laura Kelly, pushed for the 2019 agreement allowing transgender people’s documents to reflect their gender identities. (RELATED: Watch ‘Groomed,’ a new documentary by the Daily Caller about a mother’s fight with transgender extremists over her daughter’s innocence).
Kobach’s move coincides with a new Kansas law set to take effect July 1 which reverses parts of the 2019 policy and was passed by the Republican-controlled Legislature over Kelly’s veto, the AP reported. Shortly before midnight Friday, Kobach filed a memo which argued Crabtree’s order made it “impossible” to follow that law and that the state health department responsible for birth certificates is “bound to execute the law as written” by the Legislature, the outlet reported.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Kansas and LBGTQ rights group Lambda Legal denounced the move. Lambda Legal called Kobach’s actions “unnecessary and cruel” in a June 24 post on their website.
“Mr. Kobach should rethink the wisdom — and the sheer indecency — of this attempt to weaponize his office’s authority to attack transgender Kansans just trying to live their lives,” Kansas ACLU Executive Director Micah Kubic stated in a press release.
Twelve states allow individuals to change their identity without affirmation from a medical professional that they have undergone gender reassignment surgery, Capital News reported.