Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach filed a petition on June 23 in federal court asking a judge to end a mandate requiring Kansas to allow transgender people to alter their birth certificates.
If Kobach’s June 23 petition, which doesn’t seek to reverse past alterations, is successful, those who identify as transgender could be prevented from altering their birth certificates to reflect their chosen gender identities.
The four individuals, along with the Kansas Statewide Transgender Education Project, filed the lawsuit in October 2018 against the state Department for Health and Environment, which is responsible for issuing birth certificates.
The lawsuit alleged that the state’s policy violated the equal protection and due process rights of individuals identifying as transgender. It also stated that denying alterations sent “an ideological message” and compelled transgender people to identify with the sex that was “incorrectly assigned to them” at birth, thereby violating their right to free expression.
Negative Response in Kansas, Elsewhere
Kobach’s petition has been denounced by the four transgender plaintiffs’ attorneys, the ACLU of Kansas, and Lambda Legal.LGBT activists have said that changing transgender people’s birth certificates, driver’s licenses, and other records to match their gender identities is a key part of recognizing their identities and often makes a big difference in a transgender person’s mental health.
The number of states that don’t let transgender people change birth records has decreased due to federal court cases such as the one in Kansas.
The ACLU of Montana stated that it will fight a rule from last year that people can’t change what their birth certificate says about their gender.
Given a 2020 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that a federal statute against sex discrimination in work also prohibits sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination, Kobach’s endeavor was uncertain.
Federal justices in Idaho and Ohio overturned transgender birth certificate restrictions in 2020. This month, federal judges in Tennessee and Oklahoma rejected challenges to two of the few remaining state rules banning such modifications.
More Kobach Resistance to Progressive Changes
Kobach joined a coalition of 16 states to challenge a proposed rule that would allow certain unlawful aliens to receive Obamacare. Under Kobach’s leadership, a coalition of attorneys general urged the Department of Health and Human Services to withdraw the proposed rule pending judicial review.The attorneys general are opposed to the proposed rule because federal law prohibits recipients of deferred action from receiving federal benefits. The attorneys general also contend that, under the Immigration and Nationality Act, deferred deportation recipients lack lawful immigration status.
“Aliens granted deferred action, including those in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program created by the Department of Homeland Security ... are not included with Congress’s definition of ‘qualified alien,’ nor do they fall within an exception to the prohibition on public benefits,” the comment letter reads. “Indeed, Congress broadly prohibited non-qualified aliens from receiving any federal public benefit ‘not withstanding any other provision of law.’”
ACLU Kansas responded to the June 23 move by saying they “vehemently condemned” Kobach’s motion, according to a press release sent to The Epoch Times.
“No matter how much Attorney General Kobach and extremists in our state legislature may wish to, they cannot erase the fundamental protections the Constitution guarantees to every single LGBTQ+ Kansan,” wrote Micah Kubic, executive director of the ACLU of Kansas. “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.”
