Three months into Kansas' anti-trans law, confusion and fear persists

When Kansas’ latest anti-trans law took effect on February 26, Matthew 
Neumann was waiting for the other shoe to drop. Driver’s licenses and 
birth certificates with updated gender markers became invalid overnight, 
while public restrooms transformed into hunting grounds for the thousands 
of transgender Americans living and working in the state.

As the founder and executive director of the LGBTQ Foundation of Kansas, 
Neumann intended to stand his ground and hold onto his license no matter 
what notice he’d receive from the government. He told Salon he wanted to 
be a beacon of resistance as more vulnerable community members scrambled 
around him to secure their documentation.

“In the community, there was so much confusion and fear,” Neumann said. 
“There were people running to the DMV and changing it out before they got 
the letter — if they got the letter. There were people getting the letter, 
and they didn’t even have a driver’s license. There were people that were 
not getting the letter asking me, ‘Well, what do I do?’ And we were 
checking our statuses on the website to see if we had a valid driver’s 
license for over a month.”

>From where Neumann stood in rural Larned, the shoe never quite fell. But 
all hell did break loose in other ways.

Senate Bill 244 was sweeping in its scope. As soon as it was published in 
the state register, it invalidated nearly 2,000 driver’s licenses as well 
as adding bathroom restrictions that opened transgender Kansans up to 
legal penalties. The immediate aftermath of the bill was chaotic, with 
trans Kansans who had previously updated their licenses unable to legally 
drive to the nearest DMV to sort them out. But in the three months since, 
confusion has taken over as the distribution of notices regarding the 
validity of transgender Kansans’ documents remains uneven and confounding 
bathroom constraints make clear the provision was never about protecting 
women’s privacy as proponents argued.

Democratic Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly vetoed SB 244 when it arrived on her 
desk in mid-February, but lawmakers overrode her decision just five days 
later. In a statement after the override, Kelly derided the legislation as 
a “poorly drafted bill with significant, far-reaching consequences.”

“It is nothing short of ridiculous that the Legislature is forcing the 
entire state, every city and town, every school district, every public 
university to spend taxpayer money on a manufactured problem,” Kelly 
added, in part. “Kansans elected them to focus on education, job creation, 
housing and grocery costs.”

“All of this is mass confusion, and I think that was their goal because 
it’s all a guessing game that the trans people of Kansas are trying to 
play here,” said Neumann, who as of early June, had still not received 
notice nor confirmation via the DMV website that his license is invalid. 
“We don’t know what they’re doing because they’re not talking to us — 
because they’ve never talked to the trans people of Kansas. They didn’t 
talk to us about this beforehand. They didn’t talk to us about it during 
it because they rushed it through, and they haven’t talked to us about it 
since.”

“When I go in there and update my driver’s license the next time [in 
2028], I’m not going to tell them I’m transgender,” Neumann added. 
“They’re going to have to figure that out on their own.”

“We don’t know what they’re doing because they’re not talking to us — 
because they’ve never talked to the trans people of Kansas.”

SB 244’s authorization in late February redefined “gender” to mean 
“biological sex at birth” under Kansas law and immediately invalidated 
both the updated birth certificates and driver’s licenses of transgender 
Kansans. As a result, SB 244 required the government to “correct” the 
gender marker on those documents to comply with the law, send written 
notice to the affected parties to surrender their invalid licenses and 
issue new compliant licenses.

The legislation also directed Kansas’ Department of Health and 
Environment’s Office of Vital Statistics to invalidate and amend 
previously changed birth certificates in its database, requiring any 
transgender Kansan seeking a copy of their compliant documentation to 
request and pay the $20 reissue fee. The office notes in an FAQ that it 
has no means of notifying those affected of the change to their birth 
certificate, a fact some of Neumann’s friends learned by going directly to 
the Topeka office.

The law further prohibits Kansans from using a government-owned, public 
bathroom that doesn’t align with their birth-assigned sex, creating three 
tiers of legal response. The first finding of a violation results in a 
warning informing them of future penalties for any further offense. A 
second violation carries a $1,000 fine and a third slaps them with a class 
B misdemeanor. The bathroom provision also empowers other Kansans to file 
lawsuits seeking damages up to $1,000 against someone they believe to have 
violated the law.

Harper Seldin, a senior staff attorney for the ACLU’s LGBTQ and HIV 
Project, told Salon that the law makes it next to impossible to be a 
transgender person in Kansas, effectively pushing the community out of 
public life.

“If you cannot use the restroom at work, you cannot be employed. If you 
cannot use the restroom at school, you cannot go to school. If you cannot 
use your driver’s license without fear of being outed as transgender — 
which many people treat as extraordinarily private information, in part 
because of the risk of harassment, or even untoward questions — you really 
can’t go about your life,” he told Salon. “Think of all the things that 
you need to use a driver’s license for in Kansas, including vote.”

“Think of all the things that you need to use a driver’s license for in 
Kansas, including vote.”

The escalating tier of penalties and the “bounty-hunter provision” tied to 
the bathroom restriction have also stoked fear among transgender Kansans 
that causes them to “self-police” to avoid violating the law, Seldin said. 
Trans people in the state constantly worry they’re being surveilled and 
that others are willing to investigate or punish them for using the 
restroom.

“Other states have enacted restroom restrictions, but they have oftentimes 
not had penalties run directly to transgender people,” Seldin said, 
adding: “This [restriction], along with one in Idaho, is a new escalation 
where suddenly people can be criminalized for just being themselves in 
public.”

So far, neither the ACLU or LGBTQ Foundation of Kansas is aware of any 
lawsuits filed seeking to penalize a transgender person for using the 
bathroom that does not align with their sex assigned at birth. Still, 
threats against transgender people, regardless of which public, multi-use 
bathroom they use, abound.

Neumann said the death threats he usually receives have ramped up since 
the bill took effect and underscored how the law puts the lives of 
transgender men who are now forced to use women’s restrooms at risk. Many 
trans Kansans have also become “refugees” as they, with his organization’s 
help, attempt to move to places like California, Washington, Minnesota or 
Illinois.

With SB 244 in place, Neumann said his greatest fear, living in a state 
with concealed carry and stand-your-ground laws, has become using a 
woman’s restroom.

Say “I go into a bathroom, and I encounter a woman, and I scare her,” he 
said, explaining his decision to continue using the men’s restroom. “I’ve 
been telling people on interviews, ‘What if she goes out and gets her 
husband?’ I said that yesterday to somebody, and the woman said, ‘You 
wouldn’t make it to my husband. I carry my own gun.’”

A friend of Neumann’s who just started a job working in the kitchen of a 
state-run mental health facility has instead taken to self-policing, he 
recalled. After confirming with his employer that he’d be required to use 
the women’s restroom despite being “passable,” he reluctantly chose to 
comply over standing his ground because the penalties are so severe.

“’I can’t risk that because I’m not you. I don’t have my own foundation,'” 
Neumann’s friend had told him.

But transgender people choosing to stay in Kansas have the potential for 
relief. On the same day SB 244 took effect, the national and state ACLU 
filed a lawsuit challenging the law in the District Court of Douglas 
County. The law, the complaint argues, violates the Kansas Constitution’s 
protections for privacy, equality under the law, due process, personal 
autonomy and freedom of speech.

While the judge overseeing the case denied a request for a temporary 
restraining order pausing the law’s effects in March, Seldin said that 
they’re awaiting a decision on a request for a temporary injunction 
halting the law for the duration of the case. He remains hopeful, however, 
after a different Douglas County judge issued a temporary pause on a youth 
gender-affirming care ban enacted in the state last year pending an ACLU 
lawsuit challenging the law.

The court’s genuine engagement with the facts of being transgender and the 
impacts of such legislation in that case demonstrates what is possible, he 
said.

“It took a while for the court to hold a hearing and then review all the 
facts and issue the opinion, but I think it’s a good example that even 
though some of these things take time, there can be justice at the end of 
the day for transgender people,” Seldin said.