Diversity Corner

• Jurisdiction: Kansas,United States
• Pages: 14
• Citation: Vol. 92 No. 2 Pg. 14
• Publication year: 2023

Diversity corner 92 J. Kan. Bar Assn 2, 14 (2023) Kansas Bar Journal April, 2023

March, 2023

Diversity Corner

LGBTQ+ Competency in Kansas Courts

By Ellen Bertels, Kansas Legal Services

According to a 2020 survey by the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law, nearly 75,000 Kansas residents identify themselves as part of the LGBTQ+ community.^[1] Like most people, LGBTQ+ people face legal issues; maybe they have a property line dispute, or they are challenging a wrongful debt collection action, or they are a witness to a medical malpractice claim. Whatever brings them there, LGBTQ+ Kansans go to court, so Kansas needs courts that respect and reflect LGBTQ+ people's lives and identities.

For the past 3 1/2 years, I have advocated to make legal representation accessible and equitable to transgender Kansans. Now I run the Kansas Name Change Project at Kansas Legal Services, where I provide legal representation to low-income trans Kansans. I specialize in name changes but have expanded over the past year to helping with driver's license reinstatements, expungements, landlord-tenant disputes, and all sorts of other civil legal matters.

In my time advocating for trans Kansans, I've presented nearly a dozen CLEs and community education...