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Nov. 6, 2024 |  By: Annelise Hanshaw - Missouri Independent

GOP outrage sparked Missouri decision to make it harder to change gender on licenses

transgender flag

By Annelise Hanshaw - Missouri Independent

The emails started showing up on Aug. 1 into the inboxes of Missouri Department of Revenue officials, signaling growing outrage from GOP officials over what they were seeing on social media.

A transgender woman in Ellisville was using the women’s locker room at a private gym, and legislators wanted to know how she got a license that says she’s a female.

Within hours, the department unilaterally changed its policy for changing the gender marker on licenses, making the process much harder by requiring a court order or proof of gender reassignment surgery. Yet they didn’t publicize the new policy, leaving transgender Missourians confused as they turned in suddenly-obsolete forms to change their licenses.

Documents obtained by The Independent through Missouri’s Sunshine Law show the department’s decision to resend a 2016 form that helped thousands of Missourians change their gender was made overnight and at the threat of political pressure.

The first message came from a legislative assistant for GOP state Rep. Justin Sparks, who emailed the department demanding to know “where, when and why” a transgender woman was given a license stating she is a female.

The department was also in contact with the Missouri Attorney General’s Office about the woman. 

Joshua Shewmaker, deputy legislative director for the department, told Spark’s office that he’d look into the situation.

As it turns out, the person involved had switched gender markers via Form 5532 and changed their name through a court order.

Shewmaker quickly alerted six other staff members within the department that he had heard a conservative group of state lawmakers called the Freedom Caucus was planning a rally. He also questioned whether the department could make the change on its own.

“In looking at this at a high level, and I can’t find any statutory authority for us to do this, looks like maybe it was a policy we created,” he wrote.

The policy, created with the help of LGBTQ+ advocates, created a form allowing Missourians to change their gender marker on their license with the signature of a medical provider.

Hannah Wilson, an administrator with the department, said in an email to Shewmaker and her colleagues that state law wasn’t explicit on gender markers.

“There is no statutory authority saying we can or cannot allow, which I’m assuming is why the department decided to create this policy,” she wrote.

Wayne Wallingford, the department’s director, told The Independent in an interview that he “felt comfortable” that changes to the policy on gender markers are within the department’s authority.

Hours after the department heard from Sparks’ aide, Wallingford ordered the change to how the department handles gender designation revisions. 

Form 5532 was “obsolete,” emails sent to high-level staff established.

The morning of Aug. 2, a policy coordinator emailed notice of the change to license offices. However, the policy shift had not yet made it to the department’s website, and staff repeatedly contacted the technology department to update the website and remove access to the form over the next few business days.

An administrative manager noted in an email just before 9 a.m. on Aug. 2 that rejections were beginning for those who had submitted the now-defunct form. One administrator asked about a license that was ready to mail to a transgender person: “Is it too late to stop the license from being sent out?”

More pressure from lawmakers arrived that day. An aide to State Sen. Rick Brattin asked who authorized the gender change form.

Shewmaker emailed other staff members asking who he should say approved the form. Later that day, he called Brattin’s office with the updated policy and told his colleagues that the senator’s staffer seemed pleased.

That was Aug. 2, the day Sparks led a press conference outside of Life Time Fitness in Ellisville. KMOV-TV reported that Sparks and Attorney General Andrew Bailey vowed to investigate how a transgender woman got a female marker on her driver’s license.

“We are going to get to the bottom of what has happened with the Department of Revenue and that form they have issued several years ago,” Sparks told reporters that day.

In a live broadcast via Facebook that evening, he told viewers that he had received assurances that the department was changing policy. Bailey only included an investigation into the gym in a press release.

Wallingford would not comment on the speed in which the department dropped Form 5532. He said he was at a conference when the incident happened but confirmed that he decided to discontinue the form.

“I did not personally feel pressure (from lawmakers),” he said.

Asked why the change was executed in under 24 hours, a spokesperson for the department said that Wallingford, “changed the policy back to its original intent when he became aware that it had been changed by a previous director.”