The state’s leading advocacy group for LGBT rights plans to ask lawmakers to allow transgender people to correct their gender marker on their birth certificates.
Equality Kansas wants legislators to pass a law directing the state’s Office of Vital Statistics to loosen the state’s policy so transgender people can amend their birth certificates.
The state, now being sued over the issue, is one of three nationally that don’t allow transgender persons to change their birth certificate so it reflects their gender identity.
“Without the ability to correct their birth certificates, transgender Kansans face many barriers to living their lives,” said Tom Witt, executive director of Equality Kansas.
“They face enormous challenges in voting, in air travel, in securing identification that matches their appearance, and more,” he said.
Nearly three years ago, former Gov. Sam Brownback’s administration adopted a policy barring transgender people from making anything more than a “minor change” to their birth certificates without a court order.
The state’s policy only allowed someone to change the document if the person or their parents could show that the gender wasn’t correctly recorded at birth. The state doesn’t consider gender identity a minor change.
At the time, state health department officials said the old policy allowing amended birth certificates deviated from state law.
They said the new policy stemmed from a 2002 state Supreme Court decision on the legality of a transgender woman’s marriage to a man in a dispute over the man’s estate. The court found that the marriage wasn’t legal because of the state’s ban on same-sex marriage.
The state believed the ruling meant a person couldn’t change their gender at birth and consequently couldn’t revise their birth certificate unless there was a significant mistake was made on the document.
Last October, attorneys for a national organization that backs civil rights for the LGBT population challenged the state’s policy on behalf of two transgender women and two transgender men born in Kansas.
In its court filing, Lambda Legal contended that denying transgender Kansans the ability to change their birth certificates violates the equal protection and due process clauses in the U.S. Constitution.
The lawsuit also argues the policy violates their First Amendment rights because it forces transgender Kansans to identify with a sex that is not who they are on their birth certificates.
Equality Kansas also is asking newly elected Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly to reverse the birth certificate policy administratively.
“We urge the incoming Kelly administration to restore this right, and allow transgender Kansans to once again update this critical document,” Witt said.
A Kelly spokeswoman said this issue — and other legal matters — are now being reviewed. She declined to comment further.
Witt noted that a new law would be preferable since policies can change from governor to governor.
State Sen. Mary Pilcher-Cook, a conservative Republican from Shawnee, said it would be “unwise” to change the policy for updating birth certificates.
“While we should be compassionate towards individuals with identity dysphoria, state laws need to ensure objective criteria is used for identification purposes,” Pilcher-Cook said in an email.
The birth certificate issue is just one of more than a dozen issues on the Equality Kansas legislative agenda for the upcoming session that starts next week.
Among other things, the Equality Kansas agenda calls for:
- Repealing the faith-based adoption bill that it says discriminates against LGBT parents. Supporters of the law say it’s intended to ensure adoption providers can deny placements based on their religious beliefs.
- Adding sexual orientation and gender identity to state discrimination laws.
- Requiring Medicaid contractors to provide appropriate and necessary health care to transgender Kansans.
Democratic Rep. Stephanie Clayton of Overland Park said she thought the Equality Kansas agenda was more ambitious than in the past.
“Their overall agenda is more proactive than defensive,” Clayton said. “This is the first time in eight years that they have had a governor who’s sympathetic to their issues as opposed to hostile,” she said.
“It’s a friendlier environment in which to float some of this legislation.”
