Dakota West had had her female driver’s license for only five months when the letter from the state arrived in late February telling her to give it up.
The day before, the legislature had passed a law that required all state-issued licenses reflect drivers’ sex at birth. “Your current credential will be invalid immediately,” the letter said.
West’s gender had always been something other people tried to puzzle out. She was born with XY chromosomes, and doctors listed her as male on her birth certificate. But she has an intersex condition that makes it impossible for her body to respond to male hormones. She never went through male puberty, and by the time she was in middle school, she knew she was a girl. She had lived as one for the decade since.
West, 21, has long blond hair and acrylic nails. Her voice is soft. Getting her female license had felt like tangible proof that the law recognized her exactly as she saw herself.
Now, according to the letter, if she wanted to keep driving, she needed a license that said male.
“It felt like I wasn’t safe anymore,” West said. “I really felt targeted, which I think was the intention of the Kansas state legislature.”
Roughly 1,700 intersex and transgender Kansans received the letter, according to state officials. In the seven months since, some say they have been embarrassed at work and in government buildings after people asked why their IDs don’t match their appearance. A trans woman who complied with the law by getting a male license was even charged with a misdemeanor for using an invalid license after an officer pulled her over because her headlights were off.
The law also prohibits intersex and trans people from using the bathrooms that align with their gender identity, and it empowers people to collect a $1,000 bounty if they report someone they suspect has broken the law.
In April, West decided she wanted to fight to get her female license back. With help from the American Civil Liberties Union, West and a handful of others sued the state for violating their constitutionally protected right for privacy, personal autonomy, equality under the law, due process and freedom of speech. West will testify in Lawrence this week as part of a week-long trial that begins today. If she and the other plaintiffs prevail, Kansas will be barred from enforcing the law, and West and others could get their old driver’s licenses back.
“I hope the judge sees I’m a person,” West said. “I’m just a girl trying to have a life like everybody else.”
Over the last half decade, state legislatures have proposed a record number of laws restricting the rights of trans people, but until recently, nearly all of those measures concerned children. Kansas was among the first to target transgender adults. Republicans there tried for years to bar trans people from changing their driver’s licenses or from using the bathrooms that match their identities. But those attempts sputtered out in court.
This year, the state legislature’s Republican supermajority made the law a top priority and passed it in February. After Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly vetoed the legislation, they overrode her veto and decided to enforce the law immediately, rather than the regular start date of July 1.
At a hearing earlier this year, in which a judge declined to issue a temporary restraining order against the law, Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach (R) argued that a license is an official document that must reflect basic facts for public safety.
“They want the government to allow them to use the driver’s license as a kind of canvas on which they can paint various aspects of their personality and say certain things,” Kobach said. “That’s not what the driver license is. It is a government document issued by the government, owned by the government, controlled by the government.”
West bristled at the idea of turning in her license, but by March, she knew she had to drive, so she dragged herself to the DMV in her small town outside of Wichita. Her first-grade teacher was working the desk.
The teacher had long known West as a girl, and West said they both cried as she issued the new license.
“It was heartbreak for me,” West said. “I felt like I left a piece of me in that DMV, or lost a piece of me really.”
West stashed the new license deep at the bottom of her purse, but she and others say they have felt terrified since. Not only does the government have a list with their names on it, but trans and intersex people are now forced to out themselves in places where they’ve always blended in.
West has had to hand over her license at the dentist and the library. At work, someone saw her license and told other coworkers West was transgender. She’d been taking nursing classes at Butler Community College, but after the law passed, she decided to sit out the next few semesters rather than hand over an ID that describes her as something she’s not.
This summer, West visited a bank, and the teller was friendly and talkative until West handed over her license. The teller went cold after that, West said, and she didn’t make eye contact or speak to West again. West decided she had to leave Kansas, at least temporarily.
“I realized, ‘Okay, I’m not wanted here,’” West said. She moved to Knoxville, Tennessee.
Other people described the year as a series of stressful situations.
Cameron Broyles, another of the lawsuit’s plaintiffs, is a single father who has a 4-year-old son and 8-year-old twins. He lives in a rural town so small it doesn’t have a DMV. When he went to the courthouse to change his license, the workers were so confused, they talked it over in the lobby where everyone could hear. Later, they called officials in the Topeka DMV on speaker phone.
“None of it was malicious, but all of it was embarrassing,” Broyles said. “Everyone in town knows me. They know I’m a man.”
Broyles transitioned before his kids were born, and he hasn’t yet talked to them about his medical history. They would be confused and “alarmed,” he said, if he started using the women’s bathroom, as the law requires. He has a beard and a deep voice, and they’ve always known him as Dad. Broyles’s son is too young to go to the bathroom alone, so Broyles has had to beg him to hold it for as much as an hour while they’re driving long distances. On vacations this summer, he worried a hotel clerk might out him when he handed over his license.
“I’m about as normal as can be,” Broyles said. “I have a normal job. I’m very stable. I don’t think lawmakers thought about what happens when I have to take my kids to the bathroom. … But I’m not going to take my kids’ childhood from them just because Kansas wants to make something hard.”
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