Indiana’s Anti-Trans Attorney General is Preparing to Revoke Trans People’s Documents

Indiana AG Todd Rokita has been compiling a list of his state’s trans people. Following in Kansas’ footsteps, he’s quietly laying the groundwork to declare their IDs “falsified records.”

Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita is readying a full-scale war against trans Hoosiers | Image: Todd Rokita’s Facebook page

Last week, the trans community was rattled when Kansas began revoking the IDs and birth certificates of trans people in compliance with what has proven to be the most extreme anti-trans law passed by Republicans to date. Up until this point, no state had resorted to taking trans people’s IDs when implementing new restrictions, with the handful that did so prior to Kansas instead opting to revert gender markers whenever documents are renewed. And that’s with good reason: retroactively compiling a list of trans residents is an expensive and time-consuming process; this alone was responsible for halting a similar attempt in Texas.

However, as Transitics revealed last Thursday, Kansas already had a list, which it built by internally flagging trans people’s documents whenever they were changed. As a result of this, the state was able to quickly and easily revoke trans IDs by simply filtering its records for the flag. In fact, the only costs that arose from this ordeal were because of a need to mail the revocation notices and develop guidance.

Following this, Transitics asked employees in Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, and West Virginia—which, like Kansas, handle gender changes administratively and were, with the exception of North Dakota, forced by courts to implement progressive policies—about whether or not their states were also tracking trans people’s document changes.

Fortunately, all of them emphasized that gender marker amendments are not flagged in their systems. West Virginia, for example, keeps handwritten notes, and I was told that simply identifying trans people’s birth certificates would necessitate a manual review of every certificate in the state. Meanwhile, Montana outright seals the old certificates.

Nevertheless, the same cannot be said about Indiana, the fifth state that Transitics contacted as part of this investigation. Last December, Transitics broke the story that Indiana, by holding onto and not processing birth certificate gender amendment requests, has effectively been compiling a non-exhaustive list of trans people in the state. And because certain counties are still amending trans people’s birth certificates within their own birth records systems—which are separate from the state’s—those unprocessed requests are indeed accumulating. Moreover, the memo concerning this policy also states that any requests that had already been received by the time it was implemented would be sent to the attorney general for review.

So far, Indiana has refused to acknowledge this publicly and has ignored emails specifically asking about the policy. Furthermore, when Transitics filed a public records request demanding the state’s Department of Health produce a policy detailing what it does with trans people’s unprocessed amendments, the DOH claimed no such policy existed and denied the request.

But speaking to a supervisor at the DOH who oversees amendment processing, Transitics has learned that the DOH is holding onto trans people’s amendment requests indefinitely and, prior to last year, internally flagged trans people’s certificates when they were amended. Like Kansas, records can be filtered for this flag, something the state utilized in court when it provided the exact number of certificates that had been amended for gender identity reasons: 1,558.

While this is obviously concerning, it pales in comparison to what the Department of Health has been doing with the requests it’s received: as it turns out, the department has been instructed to forward all trans people’s amendment requests to the Office of the Attorney General, Todd Rokita, while it “awaits guidance.”

Except in the year since Indiana Governor Braun signed Executive Order 25-36, which directly led to the new birth certificate policy, that guidance has never arrived. Instead, Rokita’s office has continued accumulating these requests, and like the Department of Health, it has also refused to disclose what it is doing with the data when directly asked.

During that time, Rokita has further moved to restrict trans people’s documents. In July 2025, he announced that he was intervening in seven gender change court cases—including one that had concluded the previous year—in order to “protect the integrity” of Indiana birth certificates. In court, the state framed these interventions as “litigating the validity of the trial court orders commanding IDOH to amend birth certificates.” And Rokita has made clear the ruling he’s hoping for: in the initial declaration, Rokita asserted that, under Indiana law, trans people are “falsifying records” when they change their birth certificates.

But he doesn’t just care about birth certificates. In September, Rokita’s office was the only party to file an amicus brief in the trans passport case, Orr v. Trump, which he used to argue that trans people don’t deserve accurate IDs—or any legal protections, for that matter—while urging the court to uphold Trump’s policy.

Then, after the Indiana Bureau of Motor Vehicles finalized its policy banning most gender marker changes on driver’s licenses, Rokita reacted by implying that IDs that don’t “reflect reality” are also “falsified records.” Speaking to BMV employees, Transitics was able to confirm that the BMV also internally flagged gender marker changes—termed “gender reassignment”—when they were still possible and thus, like Kansas, can also produce a list of all the trans people in the state that have changed their IDs.

And this is where the problems arise. As has been previously established, there are only two conditions a state needs to meet in order to revoke trans people’s IDs and birth certificates: first, the state has to want to take trans people’s documents, and second, the state must either spend heavily to create a list of trans people or already have one. Florida and Texas met the first condition but not the second, and as a result, no mass revocations took place.

Meanwhile, Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach wished to rectify his court loss over IDs—the first condition—and because the state could already produce the list—the second requirement—he was able to push the extreme revocation plan through the legislature. Todd Rokita also meets both conditions: he calls trans people’s documents “falsified” while both making a list of trans people himself and having the ability to easily procure a broader one from the BMV and DOH.

It’s true that Kobach needed the legislature to act, but that wasn’t for any legal reasons. Rather, it was political, as an attorney general can only enforce their opinions by either going to court or having the government comply in advance. And in Kansas, the executive branch and courts are both controlled primarily by Democrats—meaning Kobach’s safest bet was through the friendlier state legislature.

But this analysis doesn’t apply when the executive branch is receptive to the idea. For example, Texas AG Ken Paxton successfully banned gender marker changes in the state by convincing the agencies in question to implement policies in line with his opinion asserting that court orders changing someone’s gender are invalid. However, because Texas lacks the ability to find out which documents it’d need to revoke, this only applies to new issuances.

Similarly, if Rokita were to release an opinion demanding all trans people’s documents be revoked by formally declaring them “falsified,” he likely would not have trouble implementing it. Already, the Department of Health voluntarily sends him information on trans people, and on top of that, both the DOH and BMV have willingly blocked gender marker changes. And generating the necessary list wouldn’t even cost them. Furthermore, the state’s Republican-controlled courts have increasingly upheld restrictions on trans people’s IDs in recent years.

However, should Rokita go in this direction, the risks to the state’s trans community would be high: under Indiana law, “knowingly or intentionally making a false statement, concealing a material fact, or otherwise committing fraud” when applying for a driver’s license is classified as a Level 6 felony, punishable by up to 2.5 years in prison and/or a $10,000 fine. But considering that retroactively enforcing this would pose a significant legal question and greatly increase the legal harms trans people would face (which would make courts more sympathetic), Rokita almost certainly won’t push his luck.

Thus, given the evidence, it’s likely not a question of if Rokita will move to revoke trans people’s documents, but rather a question of when. After all, he’s established that he wants to do it, and he’s established that he can. That said, it’s unknown what will prompt him to pull the trigger. Maybe he’s waiting for a favorable court ruling in one of the gender change cases he intervened in. Or perhaps he will wait until after the midterms to use it as a springboard for a potential 2028 gubernatorial or Senate run. He might just be waiting for the moment it can get him the most media attention.

Because one thing is clear: Todd Rokita is laying the groundwork that will allow him to take trans people’s documents. That doesn’t happen by accident.