TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Republican lawmakers in Kansas are enacting what could be the nation’s most sweeping transgender bathroom law in the US on Thursday, overriding the Democratic governor’s veto of the measure without a clear idea of how to implement their new law.
The House vote was 84-40, giving supporters the exact two-thirds majority they needed to defeat Governor Laura Kelly’s action. The Senate vote on Wednesday was 28-12, and the new law will take effect on July 1.
At least eight other states have enacted laws that prevent transgender people from using restrooms related to their gender identity, but most of them apply in schools. Kansas law also available in jails, prisons, domestic violence shelters and rape crisis centers.
“When I’m out in public, like I’m in a restaurant or on campus or whatever, and I have to go to the bathroom, there’s definitely a voice in my head that says, ‘”Am I going to be harassed for that? ?’” said Jenna Bellemere, a 20-year-old transgender student at the University of Kansas. “It just makes it more complicated and dangerous and not necessarily difficult.”
Republican lawmakers argued that they were addressing people’s concerns about transgender women sharing bathrooms, locker rooms and other spaces with cisgender women and girls. They repeatedly promised to prevent that in the bill.
Kansas House Speaker Dan Hawkins, a Wichita Republican, told GOP colleagues after the vote that the override was “the real icing on the cake” among conservative policy victories this year.
“I’m just confused,” he said.
The Kansas law differs from most other state laws because it legally defines male and female based on the sex assigned at birth and declares that “differences between the sexes” in bathrooms and other space serves “important government purposes” to protect “health, safety and privacy.” Earlier this week, North Dakota enacted a law which prohibits transgender children and adults from accessing bathrooms, locker rooms or showers in dormitories at state-run colleges and correctional facilities.
The Kansas law does not create a new crime, impose criminal penalties or fines for violations or even specifically state that a person has the right to sue a transgender person using a compliant facility. in their identity. Many supporters acknowledged before it passed that they had not considered how it would be administered.
The bill is written broadly enough to apply to any separate facilities for men and women and, Kelly’s office said, would prevent transgender women from participating in state programs for women, including women hunters and farmers. As written, it also prevents transgender people from changing the gender markings on their driver’s licenses — though it’s unclear whether that change would happen without a lawsuit.
Critics of the new law believe it is an attempt to legally erase transgender people while also refusing to recognize gender fluid, gender non-conforming and non-binary people. They argued that the bill’s ambiguities would encourage harassment of transgender people.
“The lack of clarity is by design because it allows them to reject the worst possible interpretation while also allowing the worst possible outcome to happen,” said Micah Kubic, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union in Kansas, which opposed the law. .
When he vetoed the bill, Kelly suggested it was discriminatory and said it would hurt the state’s ability to attract businesses.
The new law is part of a larger push by Republicans across the US to roll back LGBTQ+ rights, particularly transgender rights. At least 21 states, including Kansas, banning or banning the participation of female transgender athletes in women’s sports. At least 14 states – but not Kansas — restrict or prohibit gender-affirming care for minors.
Kansas’ new bathroom law borrows language — and a title — from the anti-trans “Women’s Bill of Rights” by three national groups.
One of those groups, Independent Women’s Voice, said the new law “will prevent judges, unelected bureaucrats, and administrators in Kansas from unilaterally interpreting the word ‘woman’ to mean either who ‘identifies as a woman.’
Under the new Kansas law, legal “sex” means “biological” sex, “male or female, at birth,” though it allows accommodations for intersex people if their conditions are considered disabilities under US law. Intersex people may have ambiguous external genitalia at birth or conditions involving external genitalia that do not match a person’s sex chromosomes.
The new law states that women have a reproductive system at birth “developed to produce ova,” while men have one “developed to fertilize ova.”
Supporters say they expect most school districts, cities and counties to be in line with the new law on how they handle sex-segregated spaces. They also do not expect local officials to actively police which toilets to use.
Kansas Senate President Ty Masterson, a Wichita-area Republican, said he expects police to intervene if there is “any type of harassment” but that transgender people will still use facilities with in relation to their gender identities “if they are careful about it.”
He compared the new law to existing “decency laws,” but in Sedgwick County, home to Wichita, District Attorney Marc Bennett, an elected Republican, said that overall, if a law does not list “clear elements” for a “defined elements” ” crime, the elected prosecutor “does not have the authority to enforce.
Supporters and critics suggest that the new law will prompt court cases if someone has a complaint about how local officials or even businesses handle the use of facilities by transgender people. .
Brittany Jones, policy director for the conservative Kansas Family Voice, which backed the law, said the law comes into play as officials and courts deal with conflicts.
“This is when cases arise,” Jones said.
However critics believe that the new law will encourage harassment not only of transgender people but also of nonbinary, gender-fluid and gender-nonconforming people.
“Homosexuals, people who don’t like femininity as a woman, they can’t express themselves freely without worrying about being called out and removed from the places they belong,” said Adam. Kellogg, a 19-year-old transgender student at the University of Kansas.
Former state Rep. Stephanie Byers, the first elected transgender lawmaker in Kansas who now lives in Texas, predicted legal chaos would come to her former state.
While the attack on transgender people was not physical, Byers said, “They took us in every possible way.”
___
Follow John Hanna on Twitter: https://twitter.com/apjdhanna