I’ve Covered the News, Now the News has Caught Up with Me
In my time covering trans news I’ve managed to avoid the worst of it firsthand, now Mississippi is moving to change that with a new driver’s licensing law.
opinion by Valorie Van-Dieman
Two years ago, I started the process of moving from Washington state to Mississippi. I did this for a long list of reasons, both personal and financial, with the two key ones being to stay with my fiancée as she pursued her degree, and to live in a place where the budget of a freelance writer and editor of a small independent news publication could provide more than basic subsistence.
For a trans person, Washington is miles better than Mississippi, at least in theory. In practice, the longer I’ve been here, the more the city where we landed has come to feel like home–a pleasant blue island in an overwhelmingly red state—so much so that I finally started really setting my roots here full time.
Which is why when I woke up on Wednesday to the news that Mississippi had passed a bill restricting transgender drivers’ licenses and subjecting out of state licenses to higher scrutiny, my blood ran cold.
SB 2322 is a bill that follows closely in the footsteps of Kansas’ recent attack on transgender people with SB 244, barring trans people from obtaining drivers licenses that don’t match sex assigned at birth. The bill also included attacks on immigrant drivers who legally obtained licenses from out of state, giving police the power to cite such immigrants for driving without a license and requiring them to report those drivers to ICE.
Mississippi would be the eighth state to adopt a law forcing state ID to match sex assigned at birth. What's novel about this bill–and what caught my eye the most on my first reading–was the state’s willingness to disregard legally obtained licenses from another state.
Perhaps the most obvious immediate threat of this bill is the threat against any immigrant who may need to drive in or through Mississippi after it takes effect, as they would be required to carry any and all relevant documentation on them just in case they are stopped by police (not that proper documentation has always been protection for immigrants targeted by ICE or police).
Then there is the impact of being forced to have the wrong gender marker on such a major form of identification. If I go to a bar, I’m forced to out myself to the bartender, which could mean that they police my bathroom use more heavily. If I move to a different apartment, I have to out myself to my landlords, which is worrisome in a state without nondiscrimination laws to protect me. If I go to vote, I have to out myself to an election official, which can put me at risk of disenfranchisement. If I’m pulled over, I have to out myself to a cop, which can put me in danger of abuse and outright violence.
In my case, I still have my out of state license, with the correct marker. If I don’t get an in-state license before the deadline, what happens to me if a cop pulls me over, clocks me as trans, and decides my out-of-state license isn’t legitimate because he doesn’t like my gender marker? Do I, even as a natural born citizen, need to carry all my documents on my any time I drive just in case an officer says ‘Papers, please?’
Trans people are often mired in a complex web of varyingly correct documentation, especially for those who have had to move between states at any point in their lives. For myself, I was born in Oklahoma, a state that does not allow any change to birth certificate information. I have, however, managed to update my legal name and gender in Washington, and even have managed to update my information with the Social Security Administration to match.
If the legislature of Mississippi is willing to pass a law saying certain licenses aren’t valid in the state, this begs the question of what other documentation they are willing to pass laws to invalidate. Could they pass a law saying that, since my social security information doesn’t match my birth certificate, it isn’t legitimate and I can’t use it for anything in the state?
This may just be speculation and fear speaking. But, since Trump’s inauguration last year, the worst fears of our community have had a way of coming true. And the right has shown nothing but eagerness to find every angle they can to assault our rights and the rights of anyone else they deem undesirable.
Needless to say, for all my fear of what more it may portend, this bill is plenty awful just on its own merit, seeking to restrict and harm the right’s favorite scapegoats for no other reason than for the sake of making our lives harder.
Valorie Van-Dieman (they/she) is an Associate Editor at Assigned Media. @valorievandieman.bsky.social