Kansas House, Senate pass multiple bills targeting transgender rights, care

Kansas Republicans advanced three bills Wednesday targeting transgender rights and gender-related health care in an effort likely to spark a veto override fight with Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly.

For the third year in a row the Kansas House advanced a bill banning transgender athletes from girls sports taking the first step toward one of the first veto-override fights of Kelly’s second term.

After falling short of a veto-proof majority in a preliminary vote Wednesday House Republicans for the first time gained a veto-proof majority on legislation banning transgender athletes from girls sports.

The House’s inability to achieve a veto-proof majority sunk the bill last year although Senate Republicans had the needed votes.

The chamber approved the bill 82-40. Two Republicans missing from the chamber have voted in favor of the legislation in the past. Their votes would enable the House to override Kelly in a veto fight later this session as long as the bill’s other supporters maintain their votes.

Though two Republicans voted against the bill a Democrat, Wichita Rep. Ford Carr voted in favor of the the policy. The bill was one of three policies the Legislature considered Wednesday and Thursday that target transgender Kansans.

Carr said he had listened to his constituents in deciding how to vote and agreed with the language of the bill.

The state Senate also passed legislation barring doctors from providing gender transition surgery or hormones to minors and a bill supporters call the “women’s bill of rights” that would bar transgender women from female designated spaces, including bathrooms and locker rooms, and transgender men from male designated spaces.

The “women’s bill of rights” passed the Senate 26-10 and a ban on gender transition surgery and hormone treatment passed 26-11. Both were one vote short of a supermajority.

House Speaker Dan Hawkins, a Wichita Republican, told reporters Thursday he hadn’t been watching the bills. It’s unclear how they’ll perform in the House.

The debates come as Kansas follows a national and regional trend of Republican-led states moving forward with measures that target the transgender community.

Democrats and LGBTQ activists have lambasted the legislation as bigoted, discriminatory and hateful. Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly is almost certain to veto the bills if they get to her desk.

Speaking to reporters last week, the governor called on Republicans pushing the legislation to show more empathy and “cut it out.”

Rep. Heather Meyer, an Overland Park Democrat and mother to a transgender son, said she was frustrated to once again be speaking about her child in the public arena.

“Our kids don’t just make these decisions out of the blue. They face so much fear and hatred and bullying,” she said. “There is not a child who is going to say ‘you know what, I want to be more competitive at sports so I’m going to be a woman.’”

But Republican supporters insist the legislation is essential to protecting children and cisgender women, those who identify with their gender assigned at birth.

The push to bar transgender athletes from girls sports has been a longtime goal of GOP leaders in the state Legislature who argue transgender athletes pose a threat to fairness in high school and college athletics.

Speaking to Republican colleagues, Rep. Barb Wasinger, a Hays Republican, said students who don’t feel they fit cleanly into the gendered athletics can compete in co-ed competition. She said it was common sense and that someone assigned as male at birth would be stronger and faster than those assigned female at birth.

“What it does not do is discriminate against anyone who decides they’re not in the right gender,” Wasinger said.

Rep. Brenda Landwehr, a Wichita Republican, framed the participation of transgender athletes in girls sports as the rolling back of women’s rights.

“I’m not opposed to change, but why impose on women and girls rights?” she said.

“If there’s another path, let’s figure out what that is.”

According to the Kansas State High School Activities Association, there are currently just three transgender athletes who have sought waivers to compete in girls sports.

Those requests are reviewed on a case by case basis and the activities association requires schools to review a student’s gender identity in registration documents, medical documentation and “gender identity related advantages” for the student if the request is approved. Students are prohibited from earning waivers for the purpose of “gaining an unfair competitive advantage.”

Rep. Lindsay Vaughn, an Overland Park Democrat who has a transgender sibling, said the bill attacked transgender athletes while ignoring true inequities in girls and women’s sports.

“It attempts to build political clout off of a handful of trans kids playing sports in our state,” she said. “Instead of asking who can we exclude, we should be asking, how can we create opportunities for everyone?”

Senate President Ty Masterson, an Andover Republican who has long championed the policy, said his chamber would take the bill up even if the House misses a veto-proof majority.

“Who knows what the rationale is for a vote at a time, that just kind of tells you where people are just at the beginning of the process,” Masterson said.

Rep. Brandon Woodard, a Lenexa Democrat and the first openly gay member of the Legislature, criticized Republicans for repeatedly pushing the bill while ignoring efforts to pass laws protecting the LGBTQ community.

“We can’t get a hearing on a bill that would repeal the statutory ban on same-sex marriage, but sure lets pass bills that target two people in Kansas, let’s target the most vulnerable population in our state,” he said.

Debate over trans medical decisions draws comparisons to abortion

The push to ban hormone therapy and gender transition surgery for minors has been lambasted by medical groups including the American Academy of Pediatrics but Republicans have argued young people are not mature enough to make those decisions.

“I would hope that everybody in this room and everybody there in the Senate would agree these are not adults,” Sen. Beverly Gossage, a Eudora Republican, said during a party caucus meeting. “These parents that have testified talked about how they felt societal pressures. They felt like they were trying to affirm their child”

Transgender Kansans have spoken out against the bills. Adam Kellogg, a University of Kansas Student, told lawmakers last week his decision to go on hormone therapy before college was key to his ability to transition to college living authentically.

“Medical transition is not just about saving lives, it’s about emboldening and freeing them,” Kellogg said. “I can’t imagine such a life without medical interventions and I don’t want this committee to imagine it either.”

During the Senate debate on Wednesday, Senate Minority Leader Dinah Sykes, a Lenexa Democrat, said Kansans made clear in August they didn’t want political intervention into medical decisions when voters rejected an amendment that would have allowed the Legislature to ban abortion.

“This bill would set a precedent that medical providers should not give you the best medical care available but instead give the medical care politicians decide you should have access to,” Sykes said.

But Gossage, the only senator to speak in support of the measure on the floor, said “parental rights do not extend to the consent to harm your child.”

During the debate on the other Senate measure, State Sen. Renee Erickson, a Wichita Republican, said “women’s bill of rights” legislation bill provides “linguistic and legal clarity” to the definition of sex — defining it as a person’s biological sex at birth.

“It simply codifies the definition of sex as biological, male and female, in existing statutes and laws,” Erickson said.

State Sen. Pat Pettey, a Kansas City Democrat, was the only senator to speak on the bill other than Erickson. She called the legislation unnecessary, adding that it “does nothing to talk about women’s rights.”