How Kansas Republicans weaponized the law to target 300 trans driver's license holders

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Gabriel’s mother called him crying on Thursday with some news: A new Kansas law invalidating the driver’s licenses of trans and gender nonconforming people who had previously changed the gender marker on their driver’s license was immediately in effect. “She asked if I was okay,” Gabriel, a trans man in Wichita, told The Handbasket, “and [asked] had I checked if my driver’s license was invalid yet.” At first, he admitted, he didn’t understand the gravity of the situation.

Earlier this week people began receiving unsigned letters from the Kansas Department of Revenue (KDOR) letting them know their licenses would be invalid as of February 26, 2025. The letter was first reported on Wednesday by independent journalist Erin Reed, and local and some national media raced to figure out the implications. After reviewing the law—which also restricts trans Kansan’s bathroom use in government buildings—and speaking with eight trans people in Kansas, in addition to exclusively obtaining two internal emails sent to state Department of Motor Vehicles employees about implementing the policy, a chaotic picture has emerged. By Friday not everyone who changed their marker in the past had received a letter, and it was unclear what the penalty would be for driving with an invalid license. What is clear is that Kansas Republicans have weaponized the government to target a tiny subset of an already small portion of the population to score political points and institutionalize cruelty.

Being trans in Kansas was never simple, but the last few years have been particularly tumultuous as the rise in anti-trans legislation nationally became particularly pronounced locally. Kansans have been allowed to change the gender marker on their driver’s license since at least 2007, according to the Kansas Reflector. The nonprofit news outlet reported last year that from 2011 to 2022, 380 drivers in Kansas changed their gender marker.

In 2023 Kris Kobach, the state’s attorney general, used a newly-passed law to argue that KDOR should no longer allow the practice, putting the ability to change one’s marker on pause for the next two years while it wound through the courts. Finally in 2025 the state Supreme Court denied Kobach’s appeal, and in early October people were allowed to update their licenses. But that victory would prove short-lived.

“Before it was changed, I had problems buying alcohol, entering bars (important community spaces for queer people), awkward I-9 conversations for employment,” Alex, an app-based delivery driver in Kansas, told me. “Once a doctor’s office accused me of stealing my mother's driver’s license to check in because I didn't look female.”

But changing their gender marker in 2022 made all the difference. “Not having to worry about that anymore was amazing,” they said. “I felt safe and free. It felt like I could go anywhere and be a normal citizen.”

Fast forward to the beginning of the Kansas legislative session in January of this year, and trans people and their rights were once again in Republicans’ crosshairs. A bill, SB 244, was introduced in the state house that would make the terms “gender” and “sex” equivalent in state law, barring people from amending their license or birth certificate to reflect their own personal gender identity. The proposed bill’s hearing was announced just 24 hours in advance, giving opponents virtually no time to formulate a strategy. Republicans then added language that would make it illegal for someone to use a bathroom in a government building that doesn’t align with their sex assigned at birth. Despite a veto by Democratic Governor Laura Kelly, the Republican supermajority overrode the veto a few weeks back, making it state law.

Trans Kansans knew this was coming at some point, but they never expected it would happen so suddenly and be put into effect so swiftly.

Alex said their first reaction was anger. “We all deserve to have IDs and it's unjust for the state to invalidate them like this for a vulnerable group,” they said. “Then, worry and fear. What are the consequences if we don't comply? What group is next? Should I move?”

Jae Moyer, an LGBTQ+ Activist who sits on the Johnson County Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Coalition, said they were at work on Wednesday when they saw a social media post from Representative Abi Boatman, the only trans member of the Kansas Legislature, sharing a copy of the KDOR letter. (Boatman delivered this remarkable speech on the bill in late January.) As someone who uses they/them pronouns, Moyer was not directly impacted—the only gender options for a Kansas driver’s license are male or female, unlike other states where X is a possible marker for trans/gender nonconforming people—but Moyer, who spoke on their own behalf and not for the coalition, immediately feared for their community. 

“What makes me very concerned is like, let's imagine a hypothetical for a second where I am a trans person in Kansas who just had their license invalidated,” Moyer told me. “And let's say I live in a rural area without a ton of resources. And I have to drive quite a ways to get to the closest DMV on my invalidated driver's license, and for whatever reason, on the way I get pulled over. Then it's not just, ‘oh, I don't have a valid license.’ It's, ‘oh, I'm driving on an invalid license and I can be charged with something for that.’”

That was a valid and widespread concern in the period of shock immediately following the implementation of the law, which was not initially made any clearer by guidance sent out to the DMV employees who would be processing the mandated license changes.

In an email sent on Wednesday and obtained exclusively by The Handbasket on Thursday, Kent Selk, Driver Services Manager for the Kansas Department of Revenue, doled out instructions for how to comply with SB244 and shared a copy of the letter sent to “individuals who need to return to our office and have their credential updated with their gender at birth.” Selk wrote that a flag will show on the record of anyone who has supposedly been sent a letter. Then he added insult to injury: “The individuals will be charged as normal for their reissuance.”

But perhaps most concerning of all was Selks instruction that DMV employees must email the government helpdesk after issuing the updated credentials with an individual’s license number, indicating the person was now in compliance with SB 244. It also indicated that a list is being compiled.

“I'm definitely not a fan of being marked as a trans person in a state database,” Zoey told me. “I worry that the presidential administration could start going after us with that information like they have for immigrants.” 

After receiving the letter, Zoey rushed to the DMV first thing on Thursday to update her license out of fear of what it would mean to have an invalid license. While there, she saw another trans woman doing the same thing, letter in hand. Zoey changed her name and gender marker to female in 2022, but when she had to renew in 2023, Kobach’s lawsuit was in full swing and she was forced to change back to male. Then in October, once changes were allowed again, she happily switched it back thinking she’d have six years until this came up again. “Thankfully I didn't cry this morning,” she said on Thursday. “I’m too numb to all this at this point.”

Jackie, on the other hand, hasn’t received a letter yet despite changing her gender marker in the past. She plans to sit tight until she does. “I am very worried about getting a random traffic stop and getting hit with a suspended license fine and not even knowing it,” she told me. “Or even worse, being prevented from voting when they run it at a polling station.”

She added that even if she does eventually get the letter, she worries about “having to participate in their little humiliation ritual” in order to comply with the law. “It’s an even bigger risk to go to jail I suppose,” Jackie said. “I guess I just don’t have the right barometer to deal with this kind of capricious hate.”

Midday Friday, I obtained a copy of another email sent out to DMV employees earlier in the day providing more guidance. 

“Currently, KDOR has not ‘invalidated’ any records for people who were sent letters due to the passing of SB244 which requires the ‘sex at birth’ to be listed on Kansas credentials,” Kent Selk of the KDOR wrote. “If this is completed, we will let you know.”

He indicated the letter had been sent to “about 300” license holders, putting into sharp perspective how much time, energy and money Kansas Republicans have spent this year in service of hurting such a tiny percentage of their population of nearly three million people. Tellingly, Selk wrote that the applicants don’t need documentation to make the update other than their current license and proof of address.

Michaela from Topeka accidentally ended up in compliance before the law took effect when she needed to update the address on her driver’s license in September in order to complete the purchase of a firearm. Though her ID at the time had a female marker, the DMV changed it back to male without asking. 

“Before I knew it, they clipped the corner of my ID off, invalidating it, and issued me a new temporary one with the M on it,” she told me. “Didn’t warn me, didn’t ask if I wanted to continue. They just took it.” When she asked about a recent court ruling, she was met with a confused look. Her birth certificate, however, still holds the female marker.

“Of course all this happened shortly after the Charlie Kirk killing when the national zeitgeist seemed to be in a frenzy to take firearms from trans people,” Michaela said. “I’m a student of history and that kind of talk sent a chill down my spine. I saw the writing on the wall.”

(In other echoes of history, many have commented that the new Kansas law is reminiscent of when the Nazis invalidated the passports of all German Jews in 1938.) 

Leaving the state has crossed the minds of most of the people I spoke to, though it’s not feasible for many. Between professional licenses tied to the state, lack of funds to move elsewhere, or the simple fact that they can’t—and shouldn’t have to—leave their families, picking up and leaving feels like a distant option. 

The Trans Continental Pipeline, a nonprofit mutual aid organization based in Colorado, is helping relieve the burden for trans people and their families who feel they must leave the state where they live. They work nationally to help people relocate from states with oppressive anti-trans laws to ones with better rights for them. 

A recent survey by The Movement Advancement Project (MAP) with NORC at the University of Chicago looked to understand the negative impacts adults in the LGBTQ+ community were experiencing under the second Trump administration. It found that nearly one in 10 trans adults had moved to a different state from November 2024 to June 2025 because of LGBTQ-related laws or politics. That’s an estimated 400,000 people.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Kansas announced Friday they would we representing two trans Kansans challenging SB 244 in court. 

“SB 244 is a cruel and craven threat to public safety all in the name of fostering fear, division, and paranoia,” Harper Seldin, a Senior Staff Attorney for the ACLU’s LGBTQ & HIV Rights Project, was quoted as saying in a news release. “The invalidation of state-issued IDs threatens to out transgender people against their will every time they apply for a job, rent an apartment, or interact with police. Taken as a whole, SB 244 is a transparent attempt to deny transgender people autonomy over their own identities and push them out of public life altogether.”

A personal note related to this story: 

The only journalism award I’ve ever received is one from the Kansas Press Association. As a born and raised New Yorker, the state of Kansas is close to my heart and has been [however improbably] a large part of my more recent journalism career. From interviewing a 50-year abortion rights activist based there about the state’s effort to add an amendment to the state constitution banning abortion (it ultimately failed), to my scoop about why the Marion County Record newspaper was raided by police which ultimately led to me visiting a year later, I’ve developed meaningful and important friendships and relationships with people who call Kansas home. 

This is all to say: If you come for my trans friends in Kansas, you come for me. Trans rights are human rights. Full stop.