Across the state of Kansas, transgender people are receiving letters informing them that their driver’s licenses are invalid following the passage of a law that invalidates birth certificates and driver’s licenses that do not reflect the bearer’s sex assigned at birth.
The law also prohibits transgender people from using bathrooms and facilities inconsistent with their sex assigned at birth in all public buildings, making it among the most severe bans in the United States.
The driver’s license revocations are part of a larger legislative onslaught against transgender people that is playing out in states across the country. According to the ACLU, more than 400 bills are pending before state legislatures that would target lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people. And at the federal level, the US Supreme Court recently allowed the US State Department to stop processing applications for passports that display nonbinary gender markers or a gender other than the bearer’s sex assigned at birth.
In the midst of this backlash, several states have barred transgender people from obtaining documentation that reflects their gender identity. As of February 2026, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Tennessee, and Texas do not allow people to update the gender marker on their driver’s licenses, and these states as well as Idaho, Iowa, Oklahoma, and Montana do not allow people to update the gender marker on their birth certificate. Some other states have onerous requirements for such changes, like restricting access to people who have had gender-affirming surgery or can secure a court order.
These laws expose many transgender people to a real risk of discrimination and violence by forcing people to carry identification that is inconsistent with their identity and gender presentation. Kansas’s law goes even further than other states have by invalidating legal identification that has already been issued. This threatens people’s ability to exercise other rights, including their ability to travel and vote, unless and until they obtain new identification inconsistent with their gender identity.
Federal and state lawmakers, including those in Kansas, should swiftly ensure all people can obtain and keep identification that reflects their gender identity, without burdensome requirements. And they should ensure that no right, from freedom of movement to voting, is curtailed by cruel attacks on the rights of transgender people.
