A transgender Knox County woman is suing Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee and Homeland Security Commissioner Jeff Long after the state refused to change the sex designation on her driver’s license, arguing the policy violates her constitutional rights. The woman, identified in the lawsuit only as Jane Doe, says she updated her Illinois birth certificate to reflect her sex as female in June, then ran into a wall when she tried to get her Tennessee identification to match.
Denied at the Knox County DMV
According to the lawsuit as described by WVLT, Doe went to the Knox County Department of Motor Vehicles in June hoping to have her license updated after changing her Illinois birth certificate. She was told Tennessee law prevented the change outright, regardless of what her birth certificate now says. Doe does carry a passport card identifying her as female and uses it for identification when she can, according to Fox17, but a driver’s license remains one of the most commonly requested forms of ID in daily life.
The lawsuit argues that the refusal violates the 14th Amendment because her Tennessee license no longer matches her official birth certificate, and separately claims that Tennessee’s failure to honor the Illinois document breaches the U.S. Constitution’s Full Faith and Credit Clause. In the station’s words, the argument boils down to Tennessee isn’t honoring Illinois’ official document. Doe is seeking damages and attorney fees, though the complaint does not list a specific dollar amount, the station reports.
The 2023 Law at the Center of the Dispute
At issue is a Tennessee law that Gov. Lee signed on May 17, 2023, which requires Tennesseans’ identification to reflect what the statute calls biological sex as determined by anatomy and genetics existing at the time of birth. The law forbids driver’s licenses from reflecting a transgender person’s chosen sex and treats birth certificates as evidence for identifying a person’s sex. Per the ACLU of Tennessee, the underlying definition of sex became effective July 1, 2023.
This is not the law’s first run-in with a courtroom. The ACLU of Tennessee and Holland & Associates PC had already sued the Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security over the rule barring transgender people from changing the gender marker on their licenses, in a case the organization says was originally filed April 23, 2024. That complaint laid out the stakes bluntly, warning of a risk of physical harm, abuse, harassment, social stigma, and forced public disclosure for transgender Tennesseans forced to carry mismatched identification.
A Plaintiff Told to Surrender Her Corrected License
The earlier case produced at least one striking example of how the policy has played out. According to the ACLU of Tennessee, plaintiff Chrissy Miller had successfully changed the sex designation on her driver’s license, only for the Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security to later tell her to surrender it or face cancellation of her driving privileges entirely. After a January 2025 hearing in that case, the agency affirmed its commitment to deny accurate identification documents to the plaintiffs and other transgender people in Tennessee, the organization said.
WVLT’s report notes that American Civil Liberties Union lawyers have separately challenged Tennessee’s identification law, raising both constitutional and safety concerns for the transgender community. The Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security has said it does not comment on pending litigation, according to WATE. WVLT said it reached out to both the department and Gov. Lee’s office for comment on the new lawsuit but had not received statements as of its report.
Doe’s case now joins that broader fight over who gets to decide what a Tennessee ID says, and what happens to people caught between a state rule and an out-of-state document the state won’t recognize.
