(Updated to reflect statement from Family Policy Alliance)
Gov. Laura Kelly’s administration has taken steps to allow transgender people to correct their gender marker on their birth certificates.
The state health department has entered into a consent order ending a federal lawsuit that challenged the state’s previous birth certificate policy for transgender people as discriminatory.
The plaintiffs argued the state health department denied transgender Kansans an accurate birth certificate in violation of equal protection and due process clauses of the U.S. Constitution.
Additionally, the lawsuit said the policy forcing transgender individuals to identify with a sex “that is not who they are” violated free speech rights.
“It was time for Kansas to move past its outdated and discriminatory anti-transgender policy,” Kelly said in a statement.
“This decision acknowledges that transgender people have the same rights as anyone else, including the right to easily obtain a birth certificate that reflects who they are.”
Kansas, Tennessee and Ohio were the three states that would not allow modification of birth certificates to reflect a person’s sex consistent with their gender identity.
Since winning election, Kelly has placed an emphasis on protecting the rights of the LGBT community.
In one of her first acts after being sworn into office, Kelly signed an executive order protecting LGBT state employees from discrimination.
“As a transgender black man living with a disability, I experience discrimination and embarrassment often, but a birth certificate inconsistent with who I am only made things harder,” plaintiff Luc Bensimon of Topeka said in a statement.
“It is a huge relief to finally have an accurate birth certificate that is a true reflection of who I am,” he said.
The order says the state is permanently blocked from enforcing the birth certificate policy “and shall provide certified copies of birth certificates to transgender individuals that accurately reflect their sex, consistent with their gender identity” without disclosing an individual’s transgender status on the document.
The consent order cites previous court decisions finding that similar birth certificate policies were unconstitutional.
It cites a 2018 case from Idaho where a court found the state “violated the Equal Protection Clause by failing to provide an avenue for transgender people to amend the sex listed on their birth certificates.”
It also points to another case from Puerto Rico that cleared the way for transgender people to seek birth certificates reflecting their gender identity.
The governor’s support for decision to change the policy “shows her shows her lack of concern for the accuracy of vital records, crime data, proper identification of individuals in our state,” said Brittany Jones, advocacy director for the Family Policy Alliance of Kansas.
“She demonstrates she’s willing to compromise documents and data that are critically important to every Kansan for the sake of a political agenda,” Jones said.
About 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 didn’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.
