photo by: Kim Callahan/Journal-World

Judge James McCabria is pictured on Thursday, Oct. 30, 2025.

A Douglas County judge on Monday granted a Lawrence transgender woman the temporary restoration of her driver’s license after the State of Kansas invalidated it earlier this year under an anti-trans law known as SB 244.

The woman, Jamie Miller, when the case is fully heard later this year, is likely to prevail on her claim that her due process rights were violated, Judge James McCabria wrote in his order granting the injunction.

“No other remedy will suffice,” he said, besides restoring her right to drive with a license that identifies her as a woman.

Miller, born in 1971, underwent irreversible genital reassignment surgery 13 years ago, according to her lawsuit against the state, and has court orders from Douglas County recognizing that her gender is legally female. Miller, who is also an honorably discharged U.S. military veteran, has had a Kansas driver’s license since 2014 listing her as female. She renewed that license in 2017 and again in 2023 to get the “Real ID” star, both times with a female marker.

But on April 10 of this year, she received a letter from the Kansas Department of Revenue informing her that her license had been invalidated under the new state law SB 244. That law purports to invalidate driver’s licenses that do not reflect a person’s biological sex at birth.

Miller’s lawsuit argues that the state law violates her due process rights under the Kansas Constitution, as well as her rights to personal autonomy, privacy, equality under the law and freedom of expression.

The suit, filed by Lawrence attorney David Brown, argues that the Department of Revenue has never challenged Miller’s court order declaring her female. It states that the gender marker on her driver’s license has “significant social, legal, and safety implications” for her, and the invalidation of it has caused her isolation from public life and created significant roadblocks to obtaining health care and caring for her disabled daughter.

Among other hardships, she could not sign any document listing her sex or gender as “male” without committing fraud, the suit says. Additionally, she cannot legally drive without a valid license, impacting her ability to do basic tasks like going grocery shopping.

“She’s in a weird catch-22,” Brown said of the contradictory state rules: the court order declaring her female and the requirements of SB 244 that would have her be male.

State defendants named in the suit include Attorney General Kris Kobach; Director of Vehicles Deann Williams, of the Kansas Department of Revenue; and Secretary of the Department of Revenue Mark Burghart.

SB 244, which took effect in February, has multiple components that target transgender Kansans, including a provision that invalidates driver’s licenses and birth certificates of people who have changed their gender markers. There’s also a “bathroom bill” component of SB 244, which requires public buildings to designate “multiple-occupancy private spaces” as for either male or female users, based on the person’s sex as assigned at birth, and creates financial penalties for noncompliance.

This is a developing story and will be updated.