Kansas anti-trans law forced her license to say male. Then a cop questioned it and she was charged

Kansas has dropped charges against a transgender woman who faced jail time for driving with a license that she had been forced by state law to use.

Kris Ripper, a trans woman, told Transitics that she was pulled over on May 5 while driving home from work in the rain after her car’s headlights automatically turned off. The officer, she said, questioned whether her license was real because it identified her as male. Ripper had changed the gender marker on her license March 25 to comply with Senate Bill 244, a draconian anti-trans law enacted in Kansas.

Related: Kansas law voids some transgender drivers’ licenses while leaving others in limbo

But she later received a notice for failure to appear for an arraignment on a charge of operating a motor vehicle without a valid license, a Class B misdemeanor punishable by up to a $1,000 fine and six months in jail. County prosecutors ultimately dismissed the charge, but only after the story garnered international attention in LGBTQ+ media and after Ripper described the emotional impact of being threatened with jail time over a charge she said she did not know existed.

“I’m just a little scared and freaking out,” Ripper had told Transitics after receiving the notice.

The case illustrates the consequences of Kansas’ law even for transgender residents who try to comply with it. Ripper previously had a driver’s license with a gender marker that matched her identity. But the state-required change meant her license no longer aligned with her gender presentation, creating confusion during the traffic stop and later in the court system.

Ripper said the license confusion caused the initial traffic stop to take an extended amount of time.

“After seeing my license, he spent like 10 minutes questioning me on if my license was real before I explained to him that I am a transgender woman,” Ripper said. “It has to say ‘M’ legally.”

Ripper said the officer returned her license and let her go with a verbal warning. She said she was not issued a citation. The notice she later received said that if she did not appear within 30 days, her license would be revoked, according to Transitics, which reviewed the document.

Related: Lyft steps in to offer rides after Kansas voids transgender residents’ driver’s licenses

The Kansas Department of Revenue sent letters to transgender drivers earlier this year invalidating licenses that did not list what the state calls a person’s “biological sex.” Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach has defended the law in court, arguing that driver’s licenses must contain “objective, accurate” sex information because they are used to identify people, including in interactions with law enforcement.

David Brown, an attorney representing a trans client suing the state over the law, predicted months ago that problems would arise with enforcement.

“When people who are trans are forced to produce a driver’s license that indicates a gender that is not the gender they present as, it puts them in all sorts of awkward positions,” Brown previously told The Advocate.