Employees at the Texas Department of Public Safety in June received a sweeping request from Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office: to compile a list of individuals who had changed their gender on their Texas driver’s license and other department records during the past two years.
“Need total number of changes from male to female and female to male for the last 24 months, broken down by month,” the chief of the DPS’s driver license division emailed colleagues in the department on June 30, according to a copy of a message obtained by The Washington Post through a public records request. “We won’t need DL/ID numbers at first but may need to have them later if we are required to manually look up documents.”
After more than 16,000 such instances were identified, DPS officials determined that a manual search would be needed to determine the reason for the changes, DPS spokesman Travis Considine told The Post in response to questions.
“A verbal request was received,” he wrote in an email. “Ultimately, our team advised the AG’s office the data requested neither exists nor could be accurately produced. Thus, no data of any kind was provided.”
Asked who in Paxton’s office had requested the records, he replied: “I cannot say.”
The behind-the-scenes effort by Paxton’s office to obtain data on how many Texans had changed their gender on their license came as the attorney general, Gov. Greg Abbott and other Republican leaders in the state have been publicly marshaling resources against transgender Texans.
Earlier this year, Abbott signed a bill banning transgender youths from participating in sports that align with their gender identity at K-12 public schools and ordered the state to investigate the provision of gender-affirming care as potential child abuse. State lawmakers have already proposed more than a dozen anti-LGBTQ measures ahead of the next session in January, including criminalizing gender-affirming care and banning minors at drag shows.
Public records obtained by The Post do not indicate why the attorney general’s office sought the driver’s license information. But advocates for transgender Texans say Paxton could use the data to further restrict their right to transition, calling it a chilling effort to secretly harness personal information to persecute already vulnerable people.
“This is another brick building toward targeting these individuals,” said Ian Pittman, an Austin attorney who represents Texas parents of transgender children investigated by the state. “They’ve already targeted children and parents. The next step would be targeting adults. And what better way than seeing what adults had had their sex changed on their driver’s licenses?”
Alexis Salkeld Garcia, 34, of Austin, a trans woman who changed the gender listed on her driver’s license from male to female a year and a half ago, said the attorney general’s office inquiry made her feel “terrified.”
“It’s very specifically targeted, and the one person I don’t want knowing about my gender status is Ken Paxton,” said Salkeld Garcia, a software engineer who worries state officials might try to switch the gender listed on her driver’s license back to male.
“I don’t want a cop pulling me over and knowing I’m trans. That is why I changed my gender marker extremely quickly” after transitioning, she said.
Paxton’s office did not respond to requests for comment.
The records obtained by The Post, which document communications between DPS employees, are entitled: “AG Request Sex Change Data” and “AG data request.” They indicate that Paxton’s office sought the records a month after the state Supreme Court ruled that Paxton and Abbott had overreached in their efforts to investigate families with transgender children for child abuse.
Paxton’s office bypassed the normal channels — DPS’s government relations and general counsel’s offices — and went straight to the driver license division staff in making the request, according to a state employee familiar with it, who said the staff was told that Paxton’s office wanted “numbers” and later would want “a list” of names, as well as “the number of people who had had a legal sex change.”
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During the following two months, the employee said, the DPS staff searched its records for changes in the “sex” category of not only driver’s licenses but also state ID cards available from birth, learner’s permits issued to those age 15 and up, commercial licenses, state election certificates, and occupational licenses. The employee spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid retaliation for describing internal state discussions.
DPS staff members compiled a list of 16,466 gender changes between June 1, 2020 and June 30, 2022, public records show. In the emails, DPS staff members repeatedly referred to the request as coming from the attorney general’s office as they discussed attempting to narrow the data to include only licenses that had been altered to reflect a court-ordered change in someone’s gender.
Demonstrators gather at the Texas Capitol in Austin on May 20, 2021, to protest legislation targeting transgender people being considered by the state legislature. (Eric Gay/AP)
DPS staff members did spot checks on the data, examining records that included names of specific individuals, according to records and the state employee familiar with the inquiry. But it was hard to weed out driver’s licenses that had been changed in error, or multiple times, or for reasons other than gender changes.
“It will be very difficult to determine which records had a valid update without a manual review of all supporting documents,” an assistant manager in DPS’s driver license division wrote in an email to colleagues on July 22.
On Aug. 4, the division chief emailed staff members, “We have expended enough effort on this attempt to provide data. After this run, have them package the data that they have with the high level explanations and close it out.” On Aug. 18, a senior manager emailed to say a data engineer had “provided the data request by the AG’s office (attached).”
Last month, The Post made a request to Paxton’s office for all records the attorney general’s office had directed other state offices to compile related to driver’s licenses in which the sex of the driver was changed, as well as related emails between Paxton’s office and other state agencies.
“Need total number of changes from male to female and female to male for the last 24 months, broken down by month,” the chief of the DPS’s driver license division emailed colleagues in the department on June 30, according to a copy of a message obtained by The Washington Post through a public records request. “We won’t need DL/ID numbers at first but may need to have them later if we are required to manually look up documents.”
After more than 16,000 such instances were identified, DPS officials determined that a manual search would be needed to determine the reason for the changes, DPS spokesman Travis Considine told The Post in response to questions.
“A verbal request was received,” he wrote in an email. “Ultimately, our team advised the AG’s office the data requested neither exists nor could be accurately produced. Thus, no data of any kind was provided.”
Asked who in Paxton’s office had requested the records, he replied: “I cannot say.”
The behind-the-scenes effort by Paxton’s office to obtain data on how many Texans had changed their gender on their license came as the attorney general, Gov. Greg Abbott and other Republican leaders in the state have been publicly marshaling resources against transgender Texans.
Earlier this year, Abbott signed a bill banning transgender youths from participating in sports that align with their gender identity at K-12 public schools and ordered the state to investigate the provision of gender-affirming care as potential child abuse. State lawmakers have already proposed more than a dozen anti-LGBTQ measures ahead of the next session in January, including criminalizing gender-affirming care and banning minors at drag shows.
Public records obtained by The Post do not indicate why the attorney general’s office sought the driver’s license information. But advocates for transgender Texans say Paxton could use the data to further restrict their right to transition, calling it a chilling effort to secretly harness personal information to persecute already vulnerable people.
“This is another brick building toward targeting these individuals,” said Ian Pittman, an Austin attorney who represents Texas parents of transgender children investigated by the state. “They’ve already targeted children and parents. The next step would be targeting adults. And what better way than seeing what adults had had their sex changed on their driver’s licenses?”
Alexis Salkeld Garcia, 34, of Austin, a trans woman who changed the gender listed on her driver’s license from male to female a year and a half ago, said the attorney general’s office inquiry made her feel “terrified.”
“It’s very specifically targeted, and the one person I don’t want knowing about my gender status is Ken Paxton,” said Salkeld Garcia, a software engineer who worries state officials might try to switch the gender listed on her driver’s license back to male.
“I don’t want a cop pulling me over and knowing I’m trans. That is why I changed my gender marker extremely quickly” after transitioning, she said.
Paxton’s office did not respond to requests for comment.
The records obtained by The Post, which document communications between DPS employees, are entitled: “AG Request Sex Change Data” and “AG data request.” They indicate that Paxton’s office sought the records a month after the state Supreme Court ruled that Paxton and Abbott had overreached in their efforts to investigate families with transgender children for child abuse.
Paxton’s office bypassed the normal channels — DPS’s government relations and general counsel’s offices — and went straight to the driver license division staff in making the request, according to a state employee familiar with it, who said the staff was told that Paxton’s office wanted “numbers” and later would want “a list” of names, as well as “the number of people who had had a legal sex change.”
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During the following two months, the employee said, the DPS staff searched its records for changes in the “sex” category of not only driver’s licenses but also state ID cards available from birth, learner’s permits issued to those age 15 and up, commercial licenses, state election certificates, and occupational licenses. The employee spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid retaliation for describing internal state discussions.
DPS staff members compiled a list of 16,466 gender changes between June 1, 2020 and June 30, 2022, public records show. In the emails, DPS staff members repeatedly referred to the request as coming from the attorney general’s office as they discussed attempting to narrow the data to include only licenses that had been altered to reflect a court-ordered change in someone’s gender.
Demonstrators gather at the Texas Capitol in Austin on May 20, 2021, to protest legislation targeting transgender people being considered by the state legislature. (Eric Gay/AP)
DPS staff members did spot checks on the data, examining records that included names of specific individuals, according to records and the state employee familiar with the inquiry. But it was hard to weed out driver’s licenses that had been changed in error, or multiple times, or for reasons other than gender changes.
“It will be very difficult to determine which records had a valid update without a manual review of all supporting documents,” an assistant manager in DPS’s driver license division wrote in an email to colleagues on July 22.
On Aug. 4, the division chief emailed staff members, “We have expended enough effort on this attempt to provide data. After this run, have them package the data that they have with the high level explanations and close it out.” On Aug. 18, a senior manager emailed to say a data engineer had “provided the data request by the AG’s office (attached).”
Last month, The Post made a request to Paxton’s office for all records the attorney general’s office had directed other state offices to compile related to driver’s licenses in which the sex of the driver was changed, as well as related emails between Paxton’s office and other state agencies.