Arkansas Rescinds X Gender Designation Policy on Driver’s License

Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders delivers the Republican response to the State of the Union address by President Joe Biden in Little Rock, Ark., on Feb. 7, 2023. Al Drago/Getty Images

Arkansas rolled back a policy that allows drivers in the state to change their listed sex at birth to an “X” designation on their driver’s licenses.

The Arkansas Department of Finance and Administration announced the decisions on March 12, aimed “to better safeguard the integrity of licenses and IDs in the state.”

Under the revised policy, information on a driver’s license or other ID in Arkansas must show either a “male” or “female” gender as indicated on the license holder’s birth certificate.

Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders welcomed the change and said she would not support the X designation. “This policy is just common sense. Only women give birth, men shouldn’t play women’s sports, and there are only two genders,” she said. “As long as I’m governor, Arkansas state government will not endorse nonsense.”

Arkansas quietly started allowing people to change their sex designation on their IDs without any document requirement in 2010, according to LGBT website INTO.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Arkansas condemned the policy change. “We strongly oppose the Governor and the Department of Finance and Administration’s (DFA) attempt to implement this regressive and damaging policy,” it said in a statement. “It is shameful that they have failed to consider the significant impact such measures will have on the lives of many Arkansans.”

According to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, there are 342 Arkansas driver’s licenses and 174 state IDs with the X designation, of 2,668,881 total active Arkansas driver’s licenses and 503,294 IDs.

The move follows a similar ban in January in Florida, where drivers are no longer allowed to change their licenses to list a gender that doesn’t match their biological sex.

Last year, Kansas also stopped allowing people to change the sex on their birth certificates to reflect their chosen gender identities. The decision from the state makes Kansas one of the four states that won’t change people’s birth certificates. It already was among the few states that won’t change the sex designation on a transgender person’s driver’s license.

The change was based on Kansas Senate Bill 180, which became law last year. It prevents the state from recognizing gender changes on identification documents. It stipulated that birth certificates and driver’s licenses must reflect sex at birth and cannot be changed to suit identity.

The Kansas law followed a wave of legislation to counter transgender ideology in Republican-controlled statehouses nationwide. Montana, North Dakota, Oklahoma, and Tennessee don’t allow transgender people to change their birth certificates, and Montana and Tennessee are among those that don’t allow driver’s license changes.

In October 2021, the State Department issued its first X passport, making it the first federal government agency to offer an ambiguous gender marker on an identity document. Only a handful of other countries offer the X marker for passports.

A survey by the Pew Research Center found that a growing share of Americans say that a person’s gender should be determined by their sex at birth. Sixty percent said so in 2022, compared with 56 percent in 2021 and 54 percent in 2017.

The number is different in different age groups, with half of young Americans (under 30) saying gender is determined by sex at birth. Most people in other age groups (older than 30) said they hold that view.

The view on this matter differs significantly based on political affiliations. A solid majority of Republicans and people who lean Republican (86 percent) said they believe that gender is determined by sex at birth, and only 38 percent of Democrats said the same.

According to last year’s Pew Research Center survey, about 1.6 percent of U.S. adults identified themselves as transgender or nonbinary. Young adults are more likely than older adults to identify as transgender or nonbinary. Among adults under 30, 5.1 percent said they are transgender or nonbinary, including 2 percent as transgender men or transgender women and 3 percent as nonbinary.

The survey also found that about 27 percent of American adults say they have a friend who’s transgender, 13 percent have a transgender colleague, and 10 percent have a transgender family member. Additionally, 9 percent say they know a transgender person under 18.

Darlene McCormick Sanchez and Jane Nguyen contributed to this report.