Kansas sued over policy preventing gender change on birth certificate News
Kansas sued over policy preventing gender change on birth certificate

Lambda Legal filed a lawsuit Monday challenging a Kansas birth certificate policy that prevents transgender individuals from changing the gender designation on their birth certificates.

Lambda filed the suit on behalf of four transgender Kansas residents. While no specific law prohibits changing the gender designation on birth certificates, the plaintiffs allege that Kansas enforces a policy to that effect.

In the complaint, Lambda claims that the birth certificate policy facially violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment:

By enforcing the Birth Certificate Policy, Defendants deny transgender people born in Kansas, including Individual Plaintiffs and transgender members of K-STEP, of their right to equal dignity, liberty, and autonomy because, unlike cisgender persons born in Kansas, transgender persons born in Kansas are deprived of a birth certificate that accurately reflects who they are. The Birth Certificate Policy, thus, deprives transgender people born in Kansas, including Individual Plaintiffs and K-STEP’s transgender members, their equality and dignity by stigmatizing them and branding them as second-class citizens, in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

According to Lambda, Kansas is one of only three states that does not allow individuals to change the gender designation on their birth certificates, along with Ohio and Tennessee.

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