(Headline USA) Kris Kobach, the attorney general of Kansas, asked a judge to end a requirement for Kansas to allow transgenders to change their birth certificates.
U.S. District Judge Daniel Crabtree imposed the requirement in 2019 to settle a lawsuit filed by four transgenders against three state health department officials.
It wasn’t clear whether Kobach’s effort would succeed, given a U.S. Supreme Court decision in 2020 declaring a federal law barring sex discrimination in employment also prevents discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity.
Also in 2022, federal judges in Idaho and Ohio struck down rules against transgenders changing their birth certificates.
However, this month federal judges in Tennessee and Oklahoma dismissed challenges to two of the nation’s few remaining state policies against such changes.
Kobach’s move appears to be in keeping with a new, Kansas law taking effect July 1 that protects the state’s women from biological males forcing themselves into their bathrooms, locker-rooms, and other private areas, and was enacted by the Republican-controlled Legislature over Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly’s veto.
A memo filed electronically with the request by Kobach cited the law as a reason to revisit the 2019 settlement.
The memo argued Crabtree’s order makes it “impossible” to follow the new state law and that since the Legislature “has spoken,” the state health department, which handles birth certificates, is now “bound to execute the law as written.”
Kobach scheduled a Monday afternoon news conference at the Statehouse to discuss enforcement of the new law.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Kansas and the legal group Lambda Legal, which represents sexual deviants, predictably condemned Kobach’s request.
Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press
