Kansas Sued for ‘Denying Transgender People Birth Certificates That Accurately Reflect Their Sex’

TOPEKA, Kan. — Two men who identify as women, and two women who identify as men, have filed suit against the State of Kansas for declining to change their birth certificates to reflect their “gender identity” rather than their birth sex, stating that “the gender markers originally placed on their birth certificate are inaccurate because they are based on visual assumptions about their sex made at the time of their births.”

The lawsuit, filed on Monday by Lambda Legal, argues that the State’s practice of denying the amended birth certificates deprives those with gender dysphoria “a quintessential identity document that accurately reflects who they are, thereby infringing on their fundamental liberty in self-definition and autonomy in their person and identity.”

“While the State of Kansas provides non-transgender (i.e., cisgender) people born in Kansas with accurate birth certificates—birth certificates that reflect their true sex, consistent with their gender identity—the State of Kansas categorically bars transgender people from obtaining birth certificates that reflect their true sex, consistent with their gender identity,” it reads.

The four plaintiffs, who go by the names Nyla Foster, Luc Bensimon, Jessica Hicklin and C.K., state that presenting a birth certificate that results in a discrepancy between the document and their outward presentation can subject them and others to the invasion of privacy, humiliation, harassment and discrimination.

“Denying transgender people birth certificates that accurately reflect their sex, consistent with their gender identity, reveals private information in contexts where this information would otherwise remain undisclosed (e.g., at a new job), regardless of whether a person’s transgender status may otherwise be known to others (e.g., to friends and family), and regardless of a person’s desire not to disclose that personal information,” they contend.

In addition to privacy concerns, the plaintiffs also contend that the State’s policy violates their “fundamental right to autonomy” and “self-definition.”

“When the government identifies individuals by their sex in official documents, the constitutional protections that shelter individual and bodily autonomy, dignity, and personhood prohibit the government from interfering with the right to live in accordance with one’s gender identity,” the lawsuit states.

It further argues that policy violates the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution because it forces the plaintiffs to acquiesce to the government’s “meaning of sex,” with which they disagree.

“The gender marker listed on plaintiffs’ birth certificates conveys the state’s ideological message that sex is determined solely by the appearance of external reproductive organs at the time of birth and never deviates from that—a message that is inconsistent with the medical and scientific understanding of sex and to which plaintiffs strongly object,” the legal challenge outlines.

The complainants seek an injunction against the unwritten policy, and ask that the State provide the amended birth certificates without any indication that the documents that the person identifies as “transgender.”

Read Lamba Legal’s birth certificate lawsuit against the State of Kansas in full here.

Theresa Freed, deputy secretary of public affairs for the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, told the Kansas City Star that the matter has been litigated before and that state law allows for minor changes to birth certificates, but not something as significant as one’s birth sex.

“The Kansas Department of Health and Environment does not have the authority to change an individual’s birth certificate, with the exception of minor corrections or by court order,” she outlined. “Gender identity would not be considered a minor correction.”

As previously reported, the Bible teaches that all men are born with the Adamic sin nature, and have various inherent inclinations that are contrary to the law of God, being “by nature the children of wrath” (Ephesians 2:3) and utterly incapable of changing themselves. It is why Jesus outlined in John 3:3-7 that men must be regenerated by the second birth, or they cannot see the kingdom of Heaven.

“Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, ‘Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.’ Nicodemus saith unto him, ‘How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter the second time into his mother’s womb, and be born?’ Jesus answered, ‘Verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Marvel not that I said unto thee, ‘Ye must be born again.’”

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