Last week, Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly vetoed a bill that would limit the use of public bathrooms by birth sex rather than by gender identity.
Republican supermajorities in the House and Senate adopted the measure late last month after employing a series of legislative maneuvers to expedite its passage without providing an opportunity for public feedback on key provisions, including the requirement that people use public restrooms and other private spaces in accordance with their sex assigned at birth.
It’s the latest in a series of bills the Kansas Legislature has passed in recent years limiting the rights of transgender residents. Each has been enacted into law over Kelly’s veto.
Last year, GOP lawmakers banned trans minors from receiving gender-affirming care and established harsh penalties for physicians caught providing it. In 2023, trans athletes were prohibited from competing in girls’ and women’s sports…
“I believe the Legislature should stay out of the business of telling Kansans how to go to the bathroom and instead stay focused on how to make life more affordable for Kansans,” Kelly said in her veto statement.
But as expected, the legislature overrode the governor’s veto this week and SB 244 will become law in a matter of days.
Local governments, school districts and public colleges in Kansas will have a matter of days to conform their facilities to a new state law restricting who can use restrooms and other private spaces in government-owned buildings.
Kansas Republicans this week overrode Gov. Laura Kelly’s veto of SB 244, which also prohibits transgender Kansans from changing the gender markers on their driver’s licenses and birth certificates. Under the new law, identification documents that have already been amended must be surrendered and replaced with versions that reflect the person’s sex assigned at birth.
The Senate voted 31-9 to override the veto on Tuesday, and the House followed suit by a vote of 87-37 on Wednesday.
“This isn’t about scoring political points, but doing what’s right for women and girls across our communities,” said House Speaker Dan Hawkins, a Wichita Republican who’s running for insurance commissioner. “Kansans expect clarity, not confusion. They expect leadership, not surrender to radical activists.”…
Rep. Susan Humphries, a Wichita Republican who carried the bill on the House floor in January, rejected the notion that its implementation will cost school districts and other units of government anything beyond the price of updating signage.
“The claim that this is going to cost taxpayers money is egregious,” she said. “The claim that it’s not going to keep people safe is egregious. The societal norm that we’re talking about (upholding) is that men go in men’s rooms and women go in women’s rooms.”
Kansas isn’t the only red state passing new bills aimed at various trans-related issues. In Utah, the state is considering a bill that would permanently ban hormone treatments for children.
The first bill to win approval was HB174, which would turn Utah’s 2023 moratorium on newly prescribed hormonal transgender treatments for Utahns under the age of 18 into a full ban. It would require Utah doctors for teenagers currently undergoing treatments to stop writing prescriptions by Jan. 28, 2027.
The bill, sponsored by Rep. Rex Shipp, R-Cedar City, passed on a 54-16 vote, despite objections from Democrats…
“Distress is real and often excruciating for these youth,” Shipp said. “These young people need and deserve compassionate care.”
But Shipp also argued that “no blood test or MRI can diagnose a transgender identity” and there’s “nothing medically wrong with physically healthy bodies of children” who identify as transgender.
“Mental health professionals’ job is to help people adjust to reality, not avoid it,” he continued. “Instead of encouraging young people to reject their bodies, we need to help them reconcile distressed emotional feelings with what their body is.”
Another bill would limit publicly-funded insurance from covering trans surgeries. Yet another would require private insurers that cover trans surgeries to also cover the cost of detransition.
The House on Thursday also voted 48-21 to advance HB193, which would restrict publicly-funded Utah employers, like the state or city governments or school districts, from offering insurance that covers transgender surgical procedures or hormonal treatments…
Next up was Peck’s HB258, which the House passed on a 53-16 vote. It would require private insurers that cover transgender surgical procedures and hormonal treatments to also cover “detransition” procedures and treatments.
“We just want to make sure that if we’re covering one population of people that we also cover the other population of people,” Peck said.
In Idaho, the legislature just passed a bill aimed at limiting bathrooms by sex rather than gender identity.
All government buildings and private businesses would have to ban transgender people from using bathrooms that align with their gender identity under a new bill heading to the House floor.
House Bill 607 would require these facilities to take “reasonable steps” to comply if it’s signed into law. If they don’t take such precautions, they’d potentially be subject to civil lawsuits.
There are also new laws being considered in Oklahoma and Florida. Opponents of these new laws also oppose the existing laws against gender affirming care and boys in girls’ sports which many states have already passed.
Sponsors of these bills say they are necessary for protecting women, ensuring fair competition and shielding teenagers from medical transition that they may later regret. They also frame their proposals in broader terms, arguing that biological sex is the most meaningful way to categorize individuals and that affirming gender identities that don’t line up with a person’s sex is a denial of reality, which comes with its own harms.
Supporters of transgender rights say they view this year’s state proposals as a concerted effort to chip away at protections of trans people at the state level to build support for even broader limits at a national level.
The problem for the opponents is that the seem to have lost the public.
Polling has found that Americans have become more supportive of restrictions on trans people in recent years. A majority still want to see trans people protected from discrimination in jobs, housing and public spaces, but two-thirds of Americans favor barring trans athletes from women’s sports, and about half support requiring trans people to use public bathrooms that match their biological sex.
Republican voters are overwhelmingly in favor of outlawing health care professionals from prescribing medication for gender transition to minors. More than one-third of Democrats now favor that approach, up from about a quarter in 2022, according to a 2025 Pew Research poll.
We’ll have to wait and see how all this shakes out. At some point, public opinion could shift back if people decide some of these laws are too punitive. On the other hand, the fight on some of these issues, like trans sports, seem basically settled in people’s minds. That will likely be further confirmed once the Supreme Court issues a ruling on the issue.
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