This website is best viewed in a browser that supports web standards.

Skip to content or, if you would rather, Skip to navigation.

KXCV-KRNW


News Brief

Dec. 9, 2024 |  By: Annelise Hanshaw - Missouri Independent

Lawmakers seek permanent restrictions on transgender Missourians’ IDs

transgender flag on concrete

By Annelise Hanshaw - Missouri Independent

Two bills pre-filed before the 2025 legislative session seek to put restrictions on how Missourians can change their gender marker on their state-issued IDs.

From 2016 until this August, transgender Missourians could change their gender designation on their licenses with a form and physician signature. The Missouri Department of Revenue pulled the form after a couple of lawmakers complained.

Currently, the department’s policy is to require proof of gender-transition surgery or a court order to allow transgender people to have their gender identity represented on their IDs.

State Rep.-elect Brandon Phelps, a Republican from Warrensburg, hopes to codify the policy with his first bill filed.

“This is something that should make sense with the majority that’s in our legislature,” he told The Independent. “It seems to make sense with my constituency, and it doesn’t seem to be a stretch since it is something that already matches current policy.”

Phelps said his constituents were in favor of restrictions.

“People are wanting to see some kind of guards or protections against males in female locker rooms or whatever else it may be,” he said. “That whole area obviously is a touchy one for some people, but this was something that seemed pretty simple to me.”

Rep. Justin Sparks, a Republican from Wildwood, proposed a more restrictive policy in a bill that limits gender-marker changes only to those that match sex assigned at birth. The bill has a caveat that those with sex-development disorders who may have been incorrectly assigned a gender designation may still change their marker.

The bill would prohibit changes on licenses for any “factor other than evidence demonstrating the person’s biological sex.”

“This is an issue that will have to be addressed,” he told The Independent. “We can’t hide from it, nor should the legislature try to hide from it. That’s why I think we should just try to establish an objective standard and go from there.”

He believes the best standard to determine gender markers are one’s chromosomes, which largely align with sex as assigned at birth except in those with sex development disorders.

“This is all about ensuring that women and girls know and have the expectation of privacy in a girl’s bathroom and locker room,” he said.

Sparks became interested in the policy after a transgender woman in Ellisville was using the women’s locker rooms at a private gym.

He led a press conference outside of the gym Aug. 2, and his legislative assistant contacted the department about the policy.

Internal emails show Department of Revenue employees wondering if they had authority to change policy on gender markers. An administrator said that since policy was silent on the issue, the department could switch up policy.

Sparks says the department didn’t have the authority to make the call. He pointed to a recent U.S. Supreme Court case decision, which overturned the standard of deferring to executive agencies when the law is ambiguous.

It is necessary to stipulate the gender-marker designation policy in law, he said, in order to fix the “separation-of-powers issue.”

Sparks’ bill would also remove a provision that currently allows birth certificates to be amended following gender-reassignment surgery.

Both bills are likely to face opposition from LGBTQ+ advocates. A coalition of 10 organizations wrote Thursday to Department of Revenue Director Wayne Wallingford that requiring proof of surgery was too restrictive, writing that transgender people without gender-reassignment surgery should qualify to change their markers.

“This policy change now means that many Missourians are unable to obtain, renew, or replace their identification because they have not and do not plan to obtain the now-required surgical interventions and do not want an ID that does not have a marker that aligns with their identity,” they wrote.

The organizations labeled the department’s new policy as discriminatory, adding that discrimination has “severe negative impacts to mental and physical wellbeing.”