--- title: I Served My Country. Now I’m Fleeing Kansas description: As a veteran and pilot, I believed in duty and home. Now my own state is forcing me out. canonical: https://time.com/article/2026/03/10/trans-kansas-drivers-license-bathroom-law/ author: Olivia Perdue article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2026-03-11T16:17:19.662Z article:modified_time: 2026-05-19T07:45:26.694Z article:section: Ideas og:title: I Served My Country. Now I’m Fleeing Kansas og:description: As a veteran and pilot, I believed in duty and home. Now my own state is forcing me out. og:url: https://time.com/article/2026/03/10/trans-kansas-drivers-license-bathroom-law/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltfee01e1ba0fe2542/69b188096335623934bb19e1/kansas-capitol-building-topeka-sb-244.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: Perdue Wichita at Night.JPG og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: I Served My Country. Now I’m Fleeing Kansas twitter:description: As a veteran and pilot, I believed in duty and home. Now my own state is forcing me out. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltfee01e1ba0fe2542/69b188096335623934bb19e1/kansas-capitol-building-topeka-sb-244.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  IDEASTime ideas # I Served My Country. Now I’m Fleeing Kansas by [Olivia Perdue](https://time.com/author/olivia-perdue/) ## Olivia Perdue Olivia Perdue is a veteran and a pilot Mar 11, 2026 4:17 PM UTC  The Kansas state capital in Topeka, Kansas. The Kansas state capital in Topeka, Kansas.Don and Melinda Crawford—UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images by [Olivia Perdue](https://time.com/author/olivia-perdue/) ## Olivia Perdue Olivia Perdue is a veteran and a pilot Mar 11, 2026 4:17 PM UTC It’s easy to fall in love with Kansas, seeing the flower fields bloom in Concordia during spring, flying over the Flint Hills in the height of summer, walking down Mass Street in Lawrence in fall, watching winter snow fall on the roofs of quaint houses in Newton. The state is a slice of Americana, where you can feel America’s ideals made manifest. When I was stationed at Fort Riley in 2018 as an artilleryman, I happily made the decision to make Kansas my forever home. Unfortunately, recent legislation has made me question this decision. [Kansas Senate Bill 244](https://www.kslegislature.gov/li/b2025%5F26/measures/sb244/), passed last month, requires transgender people to use [restrooms in public buildings](https://www.kslegislature.gov/li/b2025%5F26/measures/documents/sb244%5Fenrolled.pdf) associated with their [sex assigned at birth](https://www.aclukansas.org/publications/sb244faq/), and creates new civil and criminal penalties to enforce those restrictions. The bill also changed the rules regarding driver’s licenses for trans Kansans, requiring the gender marker on a driver’s license to [match a person’s sex at birth](https://19thnews.org/2026/02/kansas-drivers-license-law-transgender/). This is a pointless, cruel, and dehumanizing attack on Kansans like me. Let’s be clear. The bill does not just apply to government buildings; it applies to schools, businesses, hospitals, and anywhere else designated a public space. This puts trans Kansans in an impossible position. Do we use the bathroom we identify with and violate the law? Or do we use the bathroom that Kansas lawmakers have told us to use, and risk getting tossed out based on the perceptions of others? The bill also invalidated our licenses overnight. Any driver’s license with a gender marker inconsistent with one’s sex assigned at birth was designated invalid as of Feb. 26, 2026\. No [grace period for compliance](https://time.com/7381312/transgender-kansas-id-bathroom-bill/) was offered. The Kansas Department of Revenue sent out letters on Feb. 23 informing people that their driver’s licenses were now invalid, directing them to their nearest DMV for a “correction,” highlighting the heavy [financial and legal penalties](https://www.kansascity.com/news/state/kansas/article314848210.html) for driving without a valid license, just in case the letter didn’t feel hostile enough. This threatens to affect not just our ability to drive, but [also to our ability to vote](https://kansasreflector.com/2026/03/04/kansas-anti-trans-law-targets-ids-and-birth-certificates-and-the-right-to-vote/), as Kansas law [requires a photo ID](https://sos.ks.gov/Pubs/Elections/Guides/Photo-ID-101-Guide.pdf) when you show up to the polls.  The letter the Kansas Department of Revenue sent to the author. Olivia Perdue As a sign of how quickly this law went into effect, and the incompetency of its execution, the Kansas Department of Revenue hasn’t even been able to figure out exactly who they need to send these letters to. The state’s online license status tool does not seem to [reflect SB 244’s passing consistently](https://www.aclukansas.org/publications/sb244faq/), so there is no small number of people who have not received a letter, and who—upon checking their license themselves via the state’s own tools—see that their licenses still come up valid. Because the law makes no allowance for this, it puts these Kansans in the unenviable position of not knowing if their license is valid or not, whether they are legally able to drive, and the state being unable to tell them. To demonstrate the ridiculous position the state legislature has put us in, let me take you through my own journey as a transgender Kansan. After decades of struggling to reconcile who I truly was with the masculinity my upbringing imposed on me, I finally decided to transition, and got my gender marker changed in the spring of 2022\. It was one of the happiest moments of my life, to be seenas the woman I am. But then, in 2024, my license got force-reverted back to male because of Attorney General Kris Kobach’s crusade against transgender people, in which he directed the Kansas Department of Revenue to [revert any license renewed](https://www.ag.ks.gov/Home/Components/News/News/35/1292?arch=1). I cannot begin to describe the humiliation I felt when I received a male license in the mail, and the ladies at the DMV told me there was nothing they could do for me to correct it. Then, [Kobach lost his lawsuit in 2025](https://kansasreflector.com/2025/10/09/kansans-resume-changes-to-gender-markers-on-drivers-licenses-after-two-year-legal-battle/), and I was legally female again. Then, last month, SB 244 passed, and now I am legally male again. My legal gender has changed four times in the last four years. Let’s walk through the realities of this bathroom bill. Forcing me into the men’s room puts me at risk of being confronted, or assaulted, by men who perceive me as a cis woman or by those who perceive me as a trans woman. Ultimately, no one wins and the policy demeans everyone involved. As a result, I fear I have nowhere to safely use the bathroom other than my own home and the odd single-occupancy bathroom. Regardless of an establishment’s feelings on the matter, all it takes is oneperson to be offended by my presence in the women’s room, and I could be sued, or in the case of government buildings, potentially arrested. I can’t take that risk. Despite being my forever home, Kansas has made it clear that it is no longer safe for me, and people like me, and so I am fleeing the state. Maybe I’ll get to return home someday, but I won’t do so in this current climate. Kansas deserves better than this. It deserves better than SB 244. [TIME Ideas](https://www.time.com/ideas) hosts the world's leading voices, providing commentary on events in news, society, and culture. We welcome outside contributions. 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