An ACLU-backed lawsuit to force Arkansas to restore its gender-neutral X option on state-issued IDs was filed in Pulaski County Circuit Court on Tuesday.

The litigation against the Arkansas Department of Finance and Administration comes seven weeks after authorities reversed a 13-year policy of allowing residents to designate their gender on drivers license and identification cards with an X rather than describing themselves as male or female.

The five plaintiffs in the case are three nonbinary and two transgender residents who are petitioning Pulaski County Circuit Judge Patti James to issue a preliminary injunction to immediately bar the Arkansas Department of Finance and Administration from enforcing the rule that discards the X designation, and to require the agency to revert to its prior practice of applicants receiving the X description merely by asking. The finance agency is the defendant because drivers licenses and ID cards are issued through its Office of Driver Services.

Attorney General Tim Griffin, a Republican, told the Associated Press that he is looking forward to defending the change in court while department Secretary Jim Hudson promised the agency will also “vigorously” defend it. Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who last year banned gender-neutral terms from state documents, supported the change when it was announced in March,

describing it as “common sense.” A representative of the Republican governor did not return an email request for comment Tuesday.

The plaintiffs contend they are entitled to an immediate injunction because the way state law was broken to discard the X policy is blatantly illegal and that without an immediate halt to the new policy, the plaintiffs will suffer irreparable harm. They’re asking the judge to set a hearing before the end of this month.

Plaintiffs Brandyn Gallagher, JaVon Hansen, Kaden McIntosh, Lydia Nelson and Haley Nicole Prentice, represented by attorneys John Williams and Sarah Everett of the Arkansas Civil Liberties Union Foundation, claim that the department made the change in violation of the open-government law known as the Administrative Procedure Act found at Arkansas Code 25-15-201. According to the 20-page suit, Gallagher is intersex and nonbinary, Hansen and Nelson are transgender, while McIntosh and Nelson are nonbinary.

According to Planned Parenthood, someone who is intersex is born with a combination of male and female biological traits. According to the National Center for Transgender Equality, nonbinary is a commonly used to refer to a person whose gender is neither male nor female.

When Arkansas abandoned the X designation on March 15, 516 residents had X drivers licenses. The policy change was made through an emergency declaration that allowed the change to take effect immediately.

The suit states that the agency did not follow protocols to show the change deserved emergency status, which is defined by law as an “imminent peril to the public health, safety, or welfare” that “requires adoption of a rule upon less than … 30 days’ notice.” Otherwise, authorities are required to publish public notice of the proposed change and accept public comment on it for a month before the change can be put into effect.

The X option has been offered with no documentation required since December 2010. Now to change their gender on an ID, applicants must provide a “difficult to obtain” amended birth certificate, the suit states.

“The law requires agencies to listen to the people affected by their rules. Agencies cannot fabricate emergencies to evade that responsibility. Having failed to seek public input as required by law, DFA will now hear from us in court,” Williams, ACLU of Arkansas legal director, said in a news release about the litigation. “The DFA has failed to demonstrate any urgent threat to public health or safety that justifies this sudden and restrictive change in policy. Instead, their actions have created a real and immediate danger to the well being of our plaintiffs and other transgender, nonbinary, and intersex people, for whom accurate identification is not just a matter of dignity, but of personal security.”

State-issued identification cards are “critically important” forms of identification, with drivers licenses required to drive, while voting requires at least an ID card. The IDs are used to verify identification, and a driver’s license that fails to match its owner’s gender “leads to the disclosure of private, intimate information about one’s transgender status, and it often leads to physical harm, harassment, discrimination or groundless accusations of fraud,” the complaint states.

The suit contends the X policy was in place for years before December 2010, with the agency allowing applicants to denote unspecified gender with a “U.” Now, licenses and IDs are required to reflect the gender described on the applicant’s “identity document,” defined as either a birth certificate or passport.

Transgender, nonbinary and intersex Arkansas residents need identification documents that match their gender identity, according to the suit.

“Gender identity refers to a person’s fundamental, internal sense of belonging to a particular gender. There is a medical consensus that gender identity is innate and that efforts to change a person’s gender identity are unethical and harmful to a person’s health and well-being,” the suit states. “In addition to the psychological harm, having to present identity documents that do not match one’s gender identity can result in discrimination and violence.”