Texas Attorney general Ken Paxton demanded that the state's Department of Public Safety (DPS) turn over a list of people who changed their gender markers on Texas driver's licenses and other state IDs, according to new reporting by the Washington Post.
Using a public records request, the newspaper says it obtained emails from Texas officials asking for the information.
"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.
"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."
The Post says the records it obtained do not indicate why the Paxton sought the driver's license information.
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."
Advocates for Transgender Texans say Paxton could use the data to further restrict their right to transition, calling the effort to secretly obtain personal information on already vulnerable, marginalized people chilling.
"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?"
A Texas state law that went into effect in January forbids gender affirming medical treatment for minors and considers parents who seek such treatment for their children to be guilty of child abuse. While courts have blocked prosecution of parents, gender affirming care remains unavailable to minors.
Alexis Salkeld Garcia 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, told the Texas Tribune that 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," she said.
"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.
She added that she worried state officials might change her gender marker back to "male."