Lawsuit over Kansas IDs can be a ‘morass’ if transgender individuals intervene, legal professional normal says

TOPEKA, Kan. — Permitting transgender Kansas residents to intervene in a lawsuit that seeks to drive the state to checklist the intercourse they have been assigned at start on their driver’s licenses would create a authorized “morass,” the state’s Republican legal professional normal argued in a brand new courtroom submitting.

Lawyer Normal Kris Kobach additionally contends in a submitting made public Wednesday that the 5 transgender individuals making an attempt to intervene shouldn’t have a considerable curiosity within the lawsuit’s final result. Kobach needs to maintain the main target of the case on his argument {that a} new state regulation that rolled again transgender rights as of July 1 bars the state from altering transgender individuals’s driver’s licenses to mirror their gender identities.

Kobach filed the lawsuit final month in opposition to two high officers within the Kansas Division of Income, which points driver’s licenses. The lawsuit got here after Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly introduced that folks may proceed to have their driver’s licenses modified regardless of the brand new regulation, which defines female and male underneath any state regulation because the intercourse assigned to an individual at start. The Republican-controlled Legislature overrode Kelly’s veto and enacted it.

District Decide Theresa Watson has an Aug. 16 listening to set in Shawnee County, dwelling to the state capital of Topeka, on the transgender individuals’s request to intervene. Watson already has directed the division to not change transgender individuals’s licenses whereas the lawsuit strikes ahead, and that order is to stay in place till not less than Nov. 1. Kansas is amongst just a few states that do not permit such modifications, together with Montana, Oklahoma and Tennessee.

The 5 transgender people are represented by the American Civil Liberties Union and argue that barring modifications within the intercourse listings on driver’s licenses violates their rights underneath the Kansas Structure.

Kobach argued in his submitting, dated Tuesday, “That isn’t the difficulty on this case.” As a substitute, he mentioned, the query is just whether or not the Division of Income is complying with the brand new regulation.

“Thus, no matter grievances third events might have … such issues are merely not related,” Kobach wrote.

Kobach additionally argued that if the transgender individuals intervene and lift constitutional points, he can be obligated because the state’s high lawyer to defend the Division of Income in opposition to these claims — in his personal lawsuit.

“Permitting intervention will create a procedural morass,” he wrote.

Attorneys representing the Division of Income in opposition to Kobach’s lawsuit assist the transgender individuals’s request and argued in their very own submitting Tuesday that permitting them to intervene would promote “judicial economic system.” The attorneys mentioned the transgender residents are more likely to file a separate lawsuit if their request is denied.

Sharon Brett, authorized director for the ACLU of Kansas, mentioned in an announcement that as a result of Kobach’s interpretation of the brand new regulation conflicts with transgender individuals’s rights, “Their voices should be heard.”

“It’s telling that Mr. Kobach goes to nice lengths to stop the voices of transgender Kansans from being heard on this case,” she added.

Kobach is also making an attempt to cease Kansas from altering the intercourse itemizing on transgender individuals’s start certificates in a separate federal lawsuit.

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