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On Thursday morning, the state of Kansas invalidated the personal identification documents of more than 1,000 residents. A new law that went into effect requires state-issued IDs to reflect each person’s gender assigned at birth, instantly nullifying all driver’s licenses held by trans Kansans who’d gone through the process of changing the gender marker to reflect their identities.

Affected Kansans were informed that their licenses would become meaningless pieces of plastic with letters that went out from the Kansas Division of Vehicles this week. “Please note that the legislature did not include a grace period for updating credentials,” it read. “This means that once the law is officially enacted, your current credential will be invalid immediately.”

It’s hard to overemphasize the chaos an abrupt revocation of identity documents can inflict on a person’s life. Trans people who may have gotten their gender markers switched up to two decades ago, when Kansas first began allowing such changes, are suddenly unable to legally drive to work, school, medical appointments, or the grocery store. They cannot drive their kids where they need to go. Depending on what other identity documents they have and how strict ID-takers decide to be, they may not be able to get into a bar, board an airplane, purchase alcohol, get a job, or apply for financial assistance until they get a new license.

This new law, SB 244, is one piece of a broader anti-transgender agenda that is consuming the Republican Party. Determined to enforce a draconian gender hierarchy, the right seeks to punish people who expose the fragility and malleability of gender itself. GOP legislators are also well........

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