kansas's attorney general told a court that trans people who posted about being trans gave up their privacy. so posting is consent now. noted.
via the Lawrence Journal-World, Kansas Public Radio and the Topeka Capital-Journal, as reported by the Advocate
"If you are proclaiming something to the world, that indicates you don't have an expectation of privacy in what you've just proclaimed."
That is Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach, in a Douglas County courtroom this week, as quoted by Kansas Public Radio. The Topeka Capital-Journal, via the Advocate, has him making the same argument in nearly the same words. It is the state's answer to transgender Kansans who say SB 244 outs them every time they hand someone their ID.
what sb 244 does
The law, passed this year over Gov. Laura Kelly's veto, invalidated driver's licenses that carried updated gender markers and requires people to use restrooms on government property that match their sex at birth, the Journal-World and NBC News report. A Kansas Department of Revenue spokesperson told the Kansas Reflector it voided about 1,700 licenses, according to NBC.
The case, Doe v. State of Kansas, was brought by the ACLU, the ACLU of Kansas and Ballard Spahr. Judge James McCabria declined to block the law in March, citing a "paucity of actual examples" of harm, the Journal-World reports. This week's weeklong evidentiary hearing on a temporary injunction is the plaintiffs bringing him examples. The ACLU says legal arguments are set for Oct. 7.
the posts as evidence
On cross-examination, the state "sought to demonstrate" that the plaintiffs' "claims of being 'outed' were undermined by their own posting about their trans status on social media," the Journal-World reports. The plaintiffs answered that their posts were old or limited to a select group of friends.
The Capital-Journal reports that Kobach questioned Dakota West, an intersex plaintiff, about a post with millions of views, and that state lawyers pointed to view counts on another plaintiff's posts. Three of the five plaintiffs are suing under pseudonyms, per that same reporting.
So the theory goes: you told your followers, therefore you told the bouncer, the pharmacist and the cop at the traffic stop. By that standard, every gay man who has ever posted a thirst trap has waived his right to close the bathroom door.
ACLU attorney Harper Seldin told the court the law singles trans people out "for degradation and humiliation," per the Journal-World. One plaintiff testified about being "forced to pee outside like a dog."
what the state's witnesses said
The state's own witnesses on Thursday made the plaintiffs' case for them at least three times, by the Journal-World's account. Shawnee County Sheriff Brian Hill knew of no instance where a trans person had changed a driver's license to frustrate law enforcement or evade arrest. The acting director of the Kansas Bureau of Investigation could not identify a problem caused by a changed sex marker. A Ford County sheriff's sergeant acknowledged that nothing on a license had ever stopped him from doing his job.
Kobach, opening the hearing, called the harms "inconvenience" and "discomfort." Seventeen hundred people losing their IDs at once is quite a lot of inconvenience to schedule.
