Watch AG Kris Kobach testify on driver’s license gender marker bill
Watch AG Kris Kobach testify on driver’s license gender marker bill
- Kansas lawmakers are considering a new bill to ban gender marker changes on state identification.
- The proposed legislation follows court rulings that allowed gender marker changes to resume, despite a 2023 law.
- Attorney General Kris Kobach argues the new bill is needed to remove ambiguity that courts found in the previous law.
- The bill would also invalidate previously approved gender marker changes on driver’s licenses and birth certificates.
Kansas lawmakers have new legislation under consideration to ban gender marker changes on state identification.
The introduction of House Bill 2426 comes after the Kansas Supreme Court denied a petition for review filed by Attorney General Kris Kobach following a Kansas Court of Appeals decision.
That move meant the Kansas Department of Revenue could resume gender marker changes on driver’s licenses and other state ID cards for transgender people, despite Kobach’s assertion that a 2023 law known as Senate Bill 180 banned such changes.
That law, also known as the Women’s Bill of Rights, strictly defines sex based on reproductive anatomy at birth. The text of the law is a little over one page and lacks details.
Jason Long, a senior assistant revisor of statutes, told lawmakers that HB 2426 would “address the issues” raised by the courts with SB 180.
While SB 180 never made explicit reference to driver’s licenses or gender, Kobach told lawmakers the court rulings “defeated the intent of SB 180” and the law now “does nothing, it has no practical effect on anything.”
“So what this bill does is remove the wiggle room that the Kansas Court of Appeals seized upon,” he said.
The new bill would define gender to mean biological sex at birth for purposes of statutory construction. It would also direct the Revenue Department to invalidate licenses that have already had gender marker changes approved. A similar directive would be given to the Office of Vital Statistics to invalidate any birth certificates that have been changed.
With its first committee hearing of 2026, the House Judiciary Committee held a bill hearing on HB 2426 on Jan. 13. The bill was sponsored by the committee chair, Rep. Susan Humphries, R-Wichita, who said the committee was “starting off with a bang” and predicted a hearing “filled with emotion.” Two Capitol Police officers were posted in the room.
A day before the meeting, the agenda item was listed on the House calendar as an “informational discussion on driver’s license gender marker policy.” At some point, it was converted into a bill hearing.
House Minority Leader Brandon Woodard, D-Lenexa, told reporters there was than 24 hours notice to the public and even less time for people to submit testimony.
“They do those sorts of things in an attempt to shield,” Woodard said. “They know that the public’s not on the side with them.”
“We’re only doing this because Kobach keeps losing in court,” he said of the bill.
None of the written testimony was immediately available to attendees or on the Legislature’s website. A committee assistant indicated there was so much opposition testimony that it couldn’t be uploaded before the hearing because it is “a huge undertaking.”
In addition to Kobach, there were a handful of other supporters. Several opponents testified in person, including some who are transgender Kansans or have relatives who are.
“I’m sure there will be people who want to debate the merits of SB 180 all over again, and that’s not really my job,” Kobach said.
Humphries said there is no fiscal note quantifying the cost of the bill because staff “haven’t had time” to produce one.
New bill would address ambiguity in law
Kobach said the new bill “will remove any ambiguity” in the law.
“Courts oftentimes see ambiguity in statutes, and no statute is perfect, and sometimes you can’t remove ambiguity because of the nature of the subject matter,” Kobach said. “But in this particular case, the Court of Appeals, I believe, twisted the ambiguity to create a meaning that renders the law a dead letter.”
As part of their June 2025 ruling, the appellate judges said SB 180 “can reasonably be interpreted to be limited to ‘sex’ to the exclusion of ‘gender.’” The three-judge panel was comprised of Chief Judge Sarah Warner and Judges Stephen Hill and Karen Arnold-Burger.
Kobach said it was a “mistake” for the Court of Appeals to say gender and sex have different meanings. Kobach argued the terms are interchangeable under state law.
The judges said in their ruling “the Legislature could have included a definition of ‘gender’” in SB 180, or in separate statutes on driver’s licenses they could have written a definition where gender meant biological sex assigned at birth.
The judges said lawmakers may have a variety of reasons for the words they choose to use.
“We simply cannot assume that the Legislature sloppily and hastily adopted legislation with a complete lack of awareness of the context … we must and do give our committed public servants in the Legislature more credit than that,” they said in their ruling.
During oral arguments in January 2025, the judges and attorneys suggested lawmakers could have done a better job writing the first-in-the-nation law based on model legislation. Even Anthony Powell, who is Kobach’s solicitor general, said, “The Legislature didn’t consider every angle.”
More: ‘Words matter’: Will Kansas judges have to ‘fix Legislature’s work’ on anti-trans law?
Kobach apparently disagrees.
“I think the Legislature did a fine job in passing it, and absent judicial activism, we wouldn’t be standing here right now,” Kobach said.
He accused the appellate court of stepping “out of its judicial role and acts in a legislative capacity and says, we are going to act to change or add meaning to a statute.”
The judges indicated they believe they were doing the opposite.
“It is not the court’s role to ‘rewrite legislation,’” the judges said in their ruling. “It is only by rewriting this statute that we arrive at the conclusion propounded by the AG, that they are identical.”
During oral arguments, judges and attorneys openly suggested lawmakers could amend the law to address the issue of interpreting ambiguous laws.
“There’s nothing to prevent the Legislature tomorrow from introducing legislation to define gender in the way they’re arguing it should be defined, the same as they have defined sex,” Arnold-Burger said during oral arguments.
Lawmakers in the 2025 session didn’t heed that advice. A year later, such legislation has been introduced. Kobach said the bill’s clear definitions “will end the litigation, and we will no longer be spending hundreds of attorney man hours on this and clogging the court’s docket as well with this very litigious issue.”
More: Kansas judge considering $1 sanction against Kris Kobach in trans case
What Republican and Democratic leaders say about bill’s priority
Republican leadership was asked why the bill is a priority during a Jan. 13 gaggle with reporters.
“Because it’s a vital statistic,” said Senate President Ty Masterson, R-Andover. “If you can change something on your birth certificate, why can’t you change the date?”
“Why can’t you change your age?” asked House Speaker Dan Hawkins, R-Wichita.
“Those are statistics of factual record, and they just need to be what they are,” Masterson said. “That’ll go quickly. I don’t even think you’ll see a lot of controversy in the Legislature on it.”
He did say he expects it to be a partisan issue.
“I don’t know why they keep supporting the boogeyman this much, but for whatever reason, Kris Kobach loses in court so much that they have to change the law so they can actually get a win in the Supreme Court,” said Woodard, the House minority leader, during a Jan. 15 gaggle with reporters.
Senate Minority Leader Dinah Sykes, D-Lenexa, said, “It is not a top issue for Kansans.”
Woodard said Republicans pushing the bill so early in session shows, “Their priority is focused on culture war issues.”
“This is two years in a row of their top priority being bashing on trans people in Kansas, which does nothing to make it more affordable to live, work or raise a family here,” he said.
Jason Alatidd is a Statehouse reporter for The Topeka Capital-Journal. He can be reached by email at jalatidd@usatodayco.com. Follow him on X @Jason_Alatidd.
