Donald Trump and Kris Kobach (via Drew Angerer/Getty Images).
A Kansas state court judge sided with with former general counsel of the beleaguered We Build the Wall group Monday and ordered the state’s motor vehicle department to stop allowing transgender people to change the listing for their sex on their driver’s licenses.
District Judge Teresa Watson’s order was handed down just three days after the state’s attorney general and Steve Bannon colleague Kris Kobach (R) began a lawsuit to challenge the state’s Democratic governor, Laura Kelly.
In his lawsuit, Kobach framed the issue as one of women’s rights and argued that Kelly illegally directed the Department of Revenue’s Division of Vehicles and other agencies to disregard the newly-passed law billed as a “Women’s Bill of Rights.” SB 180, passed by the Republican state legislature over Kelly’s veto on July 1, defines “sex” as “such individual’s biological sex, either male or female, at birth.” The new law provides no alternative definition for transgender, nonbinary, or intersex individuals and expressly requires that documents such as driver’s licenses reflect biological sex at birth rather than an individual’s gender identity.
Kobach said in the filing that he was bringing the case “reluctantly” in order “stop letting people select their sex designation at will.”
“Someone must stand up for the law, even if the Governor won’t,” demanded Kobach in the complaint.
Kobach offered some American Revolution-era history in his complaint, which seems to have found a receptive audience in Judge Watson:
In the words of John Adams, we have “a government of laws, and not of men.” The Legislature makes the law, and the executive branch—including the Governor and her subordinates—must execute it, whether they like the law or not. She does not possess the power that English monarchs claimed prior to the “Glorious Revolution” of 1688, namely, the power to suspend the operation of statutes. Indeed, the Declaration of Independence was in part a reaction to this practice.
In her ruling, Watson said that the resulting injury — namely, allowing Kansas “to issue non-compliant driver’s licenses pending a court hearing” — would be “immediate and irreparable” and ordered the agency to stop people from changing their listed sex as well as to stop issuing any new licenses that fail to comply with the “biological sex” guidelines set out in SB 180.
The judge reasoned that information on a license under the “sex” heading is used by law enforcement to identify criminal suspects, crime victims, wanted persons, missing persons, and others — and that using a person’s gender identity rather than their sex at birth is a “public safety concern.”
Watson’s order is a preliminary one that is valid for the earlier of 14 days or until the case returns to court. Watson was appointed to the bench by former Kansas governor Sam Brownback (R) in 2014 and was elected for retention in 2016.
Kobach has had a history of unsuccessfully focusing on government-issued documents in a quest to advance conservative policy. In 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court unceremoniously refused to take Kobach’s case that attempted to resuscitate a 2011 Kansas law requiring birth certificates or passports for voter registration.
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