When Iridescent Roney turned up at the Kansas Office of Vital Statistics to hand in her birth certificate on Feb. 26, the staff were even more confused than she was.
Roney was one of roughly 1,700 transgender people whose Kansas-issued driver's licenses and birth certificates were revoked by a new law, which was passed eight days earlier by the state’s Republican supermajority over a veto by Democratic Gov Laura Kelly.
For years, Kansas was one of a dwindling handful of U.S. states that refused to let trans people change their gender on official documents. The policy made it impossible for trans people to hide their history whenever they flashed their I.D., potentially exposing them to discrimination and violence.
That changed in 2019 due to a federal civil rights lawsuit, and many trans people — Roney included — duly updated their documents. But now, Kansas Republicans have invalidated every license and birth certificate that did not reflect the gender its holder was assigned at birth.
Those who try to drive using their old licenses can be fined, arrested and even jailed if they do it repeatedly, according to activists and letters sent out by state officials.
Yet as Roney discovered, the rollout of this new policy was confused and chaotic.
"The folks [at Vital Statistics] were terribly kind, and I appreciate them for that," Roney, 29, a college career adviser in Lawrence, Kansas, told The Independent.
"However, they didn't know what to do. There was no plan of action for what was going to happen.”
The new legislation is part of a growing GOP campaign against trans rights both in Kansas and the U.S. more widely. Republicans have sought to cut off trans people from their healthcare, exile them from public bathrooms, kick them out of the U.S. military, and reportedly even stop them owning guns.
Kansas’ new law, known as Senate Bill 244, also includes language allowing Kansans to sue a privately transgender individual if they feel "aggrieved" about them using the “wrong” bathroom.
But the ID provisions had more immediate consequences. Though the law took effect on Feb. 26, that date was not mentioned explicitly anywhere in its text, meaning many trans Kansans were not aware it would take effect so soon.
Moreover, many people only received letters notifying them of the changes a day earlier, according to independent trans rights journalist Erin Reed.
Others never received any letter at all, said Matthew Neumann, a 44-year-old trans man who runs the LGBTQ Foundation of Kansas in Larned, two hours west of Wichita.
"I have not received a letter, still, over a week later," Neumann told The Independent.
The lack of notification has made it impossible for many trans people to renew their licenses by the deadline in the 15th largest state in the U.S., with minimal public transport.
Some were left stranded after the deadline, unable to drive to work or even drive themselves to the DMV to get new documents, said Neumann.
On Tuesday, a Kansas court declined to block the law in response to an ACLU-backed legal challenge. The case is ongoing, meaning S.B. 244 could still be overturned in future.
"Right now everything still seems to be up in the air on how it's going to affect people. The biggest effect it's had is the fear,” he said. “Which I think is something that the state wanted."
‘I’m Schroedinger’s gender right now’
Roney was one of those who never got a letter. She’d previously changed both her birth certificate and her driver’s license to match her lived gender, but only found out about the Thursday deadline last Wednesday night after coming home from work.
Having spent most of her life in Kansas, she now lives in Kansas City, Missouri, a sprawling metro area that straddles both states. Her job is roughly an hour’s drive away in Lawrence, Kansas, meaning she had no option but to brief her supervisor and take the day off.
It turned out to be an “all-day adventure,” Roney said, lasting from about 7:40 a.m. to after 4 p.m.
First, she took her driver’s license to the DMV in Grandview, Missouri, on the outskirts of Kansas City. The staff had no idea what to do, Roney said, but eventually issued her a new license — still designating her as female, her preferred designation. Then she and her spouse drove for about 90 minutes to Topeka, Kansas to Vital Statistics about the birth certificate.
"They said, 'We can't issue you a new birth certificate even when you have an invalid one.' To which I responded, 'I will be leaving here with a birth certificate, please,’” Roney said.
Roney ultimately did get a new birth certificate, albeit branding her as male. So now she is in an awkward situation because her identification documents don't match.
"According to the state of Missouri I'm female,” she said. “According to the state of Kansas,, I'm Schroedinger's gender." (That’s a riff on Schroedinger’s Cat, the famous thought experiment in quantum mechanics about a cat that is simultaneously alive and dead.)
That could be a problem, she fears, if she’s ever required to use both documents together. "I'm doing everything I can to follow the law,” she laments.
Altogether, replacing both documents cost Roney about $50 in fees plus gas money. For people replacing their driving license in Kansas, the fee is $8.
The Kansas Division of Vehicles said it was working to notify affected people "as fast as possible," within the "short timeframe imposed by the legislature."
"The Kansas Legislature neither allowed for a grace period for affected credentials nor did they appropriate additional funds to cover the cost of reissuing credentials, so there is an $8 fee to cover the cost of reissuance," the division told The Lawrence Times.
Roney finds it galling that she had to pay anything to replace a license she legally received from the state of Kansas by following the correct steps in 2023. But Roney still feels fortunate: she has a salaried job and did not lose wages for taking the day off. "Not everyone gets that same privilege," she said.
Roney noted the the new law could have myriad issues. "What's gonna happen the first couple days you miss work? What if you want to go vote?" (Kansas has strict voter I.D. laws., requiring voters to show a driver’s license, passport, tribal I.D., or other proof of identity.)
She added: "What if you get sick, and now you can't drive yourself to the hospital, and you don't want to have anyone to take you? What if you just want to go pick up cold medicine?"
‘This law is illegal, and I won’t follow it’
When Matthew Neumann got his gender markers changed around 2020-21, it was a big moment.
As a trans-rights activist, he had fought for years for Kansans' right to change their legal gender. He proudly posted a redacted photo of his new birth certificate and driver’s license on social media.
"I was so happy that I achieved that milestone in my trans journey," Neumann told The Independent.
Kansas Republicans had already tried to ban legal gender changes in 2023 with a state Senate bill which required public and private agencies to define who is a man or a woman according to their reproductive system.
Gov. Laura Kelly resisted, leading Republican state Attorney General Chris Kobach to sue her administration to stop allowing gender changes. The process was frozen by court order for two years, until an appeals court overturned that decision last October.
Neumann said he refuses to comply with the new law.
“This law is not legal, and until a judge tells me that it is legal, I'm not going to follow it,” he said. "I fought for my rights, and I'm going to continue to fight, and I don't believe in handing in my rights because they pushed a law through so quickly to strip them away."
Neumann says he has been told by his county attorney that sheriff's deputies are to ticket any trans person driving on a license deemed invalid. If he finds out this has happened, he vows that the LGBTQ Foundation of Kansas will pay for the fines.
The activist said he wasn’t judging any trans person who chose to comply with the law. His foundation is hoping to cover all expenses associated with replacing invalidated documents up to $100 (thanks to a partnership with the local Democratic Socialists of America chapter) as well as organizing rides from cis-gender people with valid licenses.
Two trans men have already sued the state with help from the ACLU, asking a judge to temporarily block the "discriminatory and dehumanizing" law as contrary to the Kansas Constitution. But on Tuesday the judge declined, saying they had not yet offered enough evidence of factual harm.
Even so, the effect has been disruptive. "People have had to take time off work to get their IDs changed," Neumann said. "And getting somebody to give you a ride, and making sure that you have that documentation for your job.”
Neumann argues that the law will force trans people to out themselves to employers, since they will need to submit new I.D. and then explain why it has the wrong marker for their lived gender. That, he says, could open them up to discrimination.
Indeed, in the 2022 U.S. Transgender Survey, 22 percent of all respondents said they had been “verbally harassed, assaulted, asked to leave a location, or denied services” after showing I.D. whose name or gender didn’t match their appearance.
Spotty enforcement has increased the uncertainty. Neumann says he knows one trans man who renewed his license after S.B. 244 came into force, only to be surprised when staff issued him a male license in apparent violation of the law.
Similarly, one fortysomething trans woman in Lindsborg, Kansas, who asked to remain anonymous, told The Independent that her license was still listed as valid in the state’s online portal, even two weeks after she received a letter demanding she give it up.
If they do force her to get an ‘M’ on her license, she added, she planned to cover it with a pink triangle sticker in defiant reference to the Nazi persecution of LGBT+ people.
‘Alone and isolated’
Since the law came into effect last Thursday, such incidents have played out across Kansas — and beyond.
Another transgender Kansan, Ruby Mae Johnson, told The Lawrence Times that she had already left Kansas for the Netherlands to seek asylum from what she described as persecution from both state and federal governments. (The Independent earlier reported on a number of trans Americans with overseas asylum cases.)
That leaves Johnson with no practical way to get a new U.S. driver's license, meaning she can no longer drive in the Netherlands.
“I don't know a single person who doesn't want to get out of these red states, if they can,” Roney told The Independent.
Advocates of S.B. 244 have described it as returning “biological reality and common sense” to Kansas documents.
"SB 244 restores sanity in Kansas,” said Senate president Ty Masterson in a statement to The Independent. “We swiftly overrode Laura Kelly’s radical veto that would have forced our mothers, sisters, wives, and daughters to share their bathrooms with biological men in government buildings.”
Defending the law in court on Friday, AG Kobach said that driver’s licenses are government documents and that the government has the right to determine what information they contain. Sex is unchangeable, he argued, and thus should not change on documents either.
The Independent has asked Kobach’s office for comment.
Jayme Johnson, a 40-year-old academic and musician in south-central Kansas who began transitioning in 2022, had long avoided changing her documents, partly because she feared it would make it easier for the government to target her in future. Now, that fear has been realized.
"If you don't do anything with your documents, your name may never go into some system," she told The Independent. "It's like, which [piece of information] is gonna be the landmine that explodes on you? I didn't want to ever risk stepping on one."
The situation has made Johnson feel "really alone and isolated", she said, making everyday tasks harder and solidifying her sense that she has no safe future in Kansas.
Claven Snow, a 47-year-old trans father of two in Douglas County, Kansas, felt similarly. For him, so far, S.B. 244 has “only been annoying”, but it feels like “a harbinger of more sinister things on the horizon.”
“Right now, it’s just the gender marker on my ID, which I thought was settled,” Snow told The Independent. “But I have two school-age children and court papers verifying my paternity. That seems settled now, but are they going to try and invalidate those, too?”
This story was updated at 1:11 p.m. Pacific Time on Wednesday March 11, 2026 to add a statement from Kansas Senate president Ty Masterson.