BREAKING
Kansas voided a transgender veteran's driver's license under a new anti-trans law. A judge just ordered it restored and said she is likely to prove the state violated her due process rights.
Jamie Miller is an honorably discharged U.S. military veteran from Lawrence who has carried a Kansas license identifying her as female since 2014. She renewed it in 2017, and again in 2023 to get the Real ID star, with a female marker both times. She had irreversible gender-affirming surgery 13 years ago and holds Douglas County court orders recognizing her as legally female.
On April 10 a letter arrived from the Kansas Department of Revenue telling her the license was void under SB 244, a law that cancels licenses that do not list what the state calls a person's biological sex at birth.
So she could not legally drive. Not to buy groceries, not to her health care appointments, not to care for her disabled daughter. Her lawsuit says the invalidation cut her off from public life, and that she could not sign any document listing her sex as male without committing fraud.
"She's in a weird catch-22," said her attorney, David Brown, describing the court order calling her female and the state law insisting she is male.
Douglas County Judge James McCabria granted the injunction Monday, writing that Miller is likely to prevail on her claim that the state violated her due process rights when the case is fully heard later this year. "No other remedy will suffice," he wrote, besides restoring her right to drive with a license that identifies her as a woman.
The state has never challenged the court order declaring Miller female. Attorney General Kris Kobach, a defendant in her suit, has argued in court that licenses must carry "objective, accurate" sex information because police use them to identify people.
SB 244 took effect in February after the Republican-led Legislature skipped public input and overrode Governor Laura Kelly's veto on Feb. 18. It also voids birth certificates with updated gender markers, and its bathroom provision fines public buildings $25,000, rising to $125,000 for later offenses. The same judge refused in March to pause the law. A hearing on the broader challenge to SB 244 begins Sept. 29.
SOURCE with comments
This doesn't mention it but when the law was first passed one of the problems was that the licenses were cancelled with "immediate effect" which meant that she and others like her couldn't even drive to the local DMV to have their licenses amended to agree with the law.