photo by: Shutterstock Image

Kansas City, Kan. — A federal lawsuit filed Monday challenges a Kansas policy that prohibits changing the gender designation on birth certificates for transgender people.

Kansas is one of three states with similar policies, according to Lambda Legal, the civil rights group that brought the litigation. Tennessee and Ohio are the others.

“The birth certificate policy at issue in this case is archaic and discriminatory. Kansas is out of step with the rest of America,” said Lambda senior attorney Omar Gonzalez-Pagan.

The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court on behalf of four transgender people born in Kansas and the Kansas Statewide Transgender Education Project. It seeks an order forcing state officials to provide birth certificates that reflect a transgender person’s sex consistent with their gender identity.

The Kansas Department of Health and Environment said in an email that the issue was previously litigated in Shawnee County District Court. Department spokeswoman Theresa Freed said it does not have the authority to change a birth certificate except to make minor corrections or by a court order, adding that gender identity is not considered a minor correction.

The lawsuit contends Kansas’ birth certificate policy violates the U.S. Constitution’s guarantees to equal protection of the laws, privacy and freedom of expression. It also argues that the policy is inconsistent with the state’s own procedure of permitting transgender people to correct the gender designation on their driver’s licenses.

“By not allowing transgender people like me to correct our birth certificates, the state complicates every aspect of our lives,” said Luc Bensimon, a 46-year-old Topeka resident who is one of the plaintiffs in the litigation.

In practical terms, the birth certificate policy denies transgender persons born in Kansas access to birth certificates that they can use, the lawsuit contends.

“This absolute refusal to issue accurate birth certificates to transgender persons, consistent with their gender identity, erects a significant barrier to the full recognition, participation, and inclusion of transgender people in society and subjects them to discrimination, invasions of privacy, harassment, humiliation, stigma, harm to their health, and even violence,” according to the complaint.