What’s the difference between a 15-year-old and a transgender adult? The 15-year-old can drive legally in Kansas.
It sounds like a joke, but it’s a cruel reality. As of Feb. 26, Kansas has invalidated the driver’s licenses of the approximately 1,700 trans Kansans whose licenses reflected their gender rather than their birth-assigned sex. Unlike states that never allowed changes to gender markers, Kansas’ move is a striking reversal of its prior permissive policy. This law, one of hundreds of pieces of anti-trans legislation across the country senselessly targets the small minority of people who happen to be trans.
This wave of legislation follows previously enacted “bathroom bills” that barred trans individuals’ access to public restrooms matching their gender identity – a fight that now awaits judicial resolution. In 2026, lawmakers have raised the stakes to invalidate trans people’s identity documents. These laws make anyone who’s even a little gender nonconforming an object of suspicion, a potential criminal.
Kansas made no grace period for the implementation of this law, so a trans person can’t even drive to the DMV to change their license without committing a crime. Because getting around Kansas likely requires a car, this law not only criminalizes trans people but also cuts off their mobility. How can they go to work? How can they take their children to school? How can they buy food?
New laws require resources to draft, edit, finalize and implement them. But in this case, it wasn’t the execution that was the problem so much as the objective. Getting 1,700 trans drivers off the road does not serve the people of Kansas in any way. It simply undermines the lives of these individuals and their families. As Utah Gov. Spencer Cox noted in his veto of a ban on trans individuals in sports, the number of trans folks (in that case, student athletes) is so small, the legislative push to marginalize them seems much ado about nothing. A waste of time.
Equally important is the need for compassion. As Cox further stated: “I must admit, I am not an expert on transgenderism. I struggle to understand so much of it and the science is conflicting. When in doubt however, I always try to err on the side of kindness, mercy and compassion.” Even so, Utah’s Legislature overrode the veto.
The ID law in Kansas also undermines law enforcement by unnecessarily complicating gender markers. Trans people mostly present as the gender to which they transition. Since the law passed, when a cop in Kansas pulls over someone with a broken taillight, they may find a driver who looks like a woman with an “M” on their license. This law creates problems while solving none. Law enforcement officers’ jobs will become harder when they encounter “M” or “F” drivers who look like the opposite of what’s on their license. Indeed, this mismatch was the principal reason even conservative states like Kansas authorized trans people to update their birth certificates and drivers’ licenses.
Advocates for these policing mechanisms — of licenses, bathrooms or sports — argue that they “protect women,” but it merely complicates life for people of all sexes. It’s not about protecting women: Cruelty is the point. Hundreds of recent statutes, executive actions, and regulations seem to play a game of one-upmanship in which states try to find ways to be even more cruel. Witness for example, the Federal Bureau of Prisons moving trans women to all-male prisons, where they will surely face a torturous existence. But it’s not just consequential choices like prisoner housing; these laws even extend to banning drag shows.
Of all these laws, Kansas’ law takes rights deprivation to a new level: Its effect is retroactive. As of Feb. 26, trans Kansans lost the validity of their driver’s licenses. Simply put, the law seeks to ban trans people from public life, as of a few weeks ago.
Rather than ask whether trans Kansans should be allowed to drive, legislators should focus on issues that affect all three million Kansans. Every anti-trans “women’s rights” law requires resources. Instead, legislators could fix problems that affect everyone, like improving affordability or government efficiency, or even just filling potholes. One might ask why Kansas’ legislature chose to focus on hurting 1,700 people instead of helping 3 million.
Kansas’ law, like many aimed at trans people in other states, makes life harder for targeted residents but also for its government workers who interact with them. It’s a model of what government should not do: unconscionable cruelty and complexity, for no public purpose whatsoever. Kansas’ public officials should avoid the distractions of petty prejudices and focus on representing all their citizens.
Darren Rosenblum, a professor of law, is the author, most recently, of “Queers, Closets, and Corporate Governance.”
