Red States Are Racing to Outdo Each Other on Their Favorite Fake Issue. But One Just Jumped to the Head of the Pack.
This week, the Kansas legislature passed the latest—and arguably most egregious to date—entry in a slew of state-level bills this session targeting the rights of transgender Americans. The bill, SB 244, nominally seeks to define sex and gender as purely binary and designated at birth, following on President Trump’s executive order last year, and triggers a range of related administrative and legal changes. In practice, the bill has, suddenly and with almost no warning, invalidated all state IDs and birth certificates that do not match the holder’s gender that was assigned at birth. This will force trans Kansans who had previously changed their gender markers legally (an option that’s been available for 19 years) to out themselves anytime they are required to present their IDs for any reason—a situation that is, at best, dehumanizing, and, at worst, poses a real risk of physical harm.
One of the most immediate concrete impacts on trans Kansans is that overnight it became illegal for over 1000 of them to drive. This is a problem that ranges from deeply inconvenient for the average driver, to potentially catastrophic for anyone who relies on their car for work who may now be at risk of losing their income and even employment. In a particularly cruel move, the bill contained no grace period or provisions to ensure trans Kansans can even reasonably follow the law if they wish to do so.
How is someone who is unexpectedly unable to drive supposed to get to an office to reinstate their license if they don’t live somewhere with access to a public transit system? They certainly can’t legally drive there. And, because the National Driver Register requires license suspensions and revocations to be handled in their state of origin, a trans Kansan can’t even relocate to another state to get a new license.
SB 244 also contains a “bathroom bill” provision applying strict sex segregation to a range of spaces, and establishes a “bounty hunter” mechanism for individuals who feel called to such enforcement. But to me, the most alarming aspect is that Kansas requires a photo ID in order to vote. So, if for any reason someone is unable to reinstate their ID, they will have no way of voting in their own interests. While it may be a stretch to call this act disenfranchisement in a legal sense, it does seem notable that this has occurred during a midterm election year and in tandem with a law repealing Kansas’s Mail Ballot Election Act.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/really-thought-republican-attacks-against-143000713.html
= new reply since forum marked as read
