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<https://www.politico.com/news/2023/04/28/kansas-gop-trans-law-00094452>

The nation’s political strife over gender, sex, bathrooms and sports teams boiled over in Kansas Thursday as conservative lawmakers passed one of the broadest restrictions on transgender people in the country.

The Republican-controlled Legislature overrode a veto from Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly to define a “woman” in state law by a person’s reproductive
biology at birth. It’s a move LGBTQ activists say will legally erase trans existence and will embolden conservative school districts to install
stricter policies against already vulnerable students.

“I promised Kansans I’d govern from the middle of the road and that I’d
serve as a check on legislation that is too extreme one way or the other,” Kelly tweeted after the override. “I’m disappointed some legislators are
eager to force through extremist legislation that will hurt our economy
and tarnish our reputation as the Free State.”

The measure is the culmination of a long-running messaging campaign
Republicans have built across the country directed at passing a “Women’s
Bill of Rights.” And the GOP’s victory in Kansas may signal the success of their tactics as similar proposals get introduced or advance in Oklahoma,
South Carolina, North Dakota and Tennessee.

Kansas House Republicans touted their override as a win for protecting
women’s rights.

The chamber’s top lawmakers said in a statement that they “stand with
women and girls in Kansas and their right to privacy, safety and dignity
in single-sex spaces. Trading one group’s rights for another’s is never
okay.”

Montana, where both chambers of the statehouse have cleared a bill that
would also codify a definition of sex into law, is expected to join Kansas
in the next few days.

“We saw they began with sports bans, but we know that the goal of the
people targeting the trans community was never about sports — it was about eradicating trans people from public life,” Montana Rep. Zooey Zephyr, the first transgender woman elected to the state legislature, said in an
interview.

Zephyr gained national attention this month for telling her GOP colleagues
they would have blood on their hands for supporting bills that prohibit
youth gender-affirming care. She was censured by the Montana state
Legislature Wednesday after refusing to apologize for her remarks and
hundreds of people protested her silencing at the state Capitol. The restrictions prevent her from speaking on the floor for the rest of the legislative session, though she will be able to vote remotely.

“Trans people exist,” Zephyr, a Democrat, told POLITICO. “Non-binary
people exist, intersex people exist and you cannot legislate us out of existence.”

After being shut out of power in Washington, conservative women’s groups quickly turned their attention to state capitals, most of which are run by
GOP majorities or supermajorities, having tested gender issues in a number
of 2022 campaigns. These statehouse fights over codifying a binary
definition of sex will also likely rattle school districts caught between conflicting state and federal laws that dictate which bathrooms and sports teams transgender students can access.

More than 20 states have laws restricting transgender students from
playing on sports teams consistent with their gender identity, at least
seven states block them from using facilities and more than 15 states bar transgender minors from accessing gender-affirming care.

The Kansas measure defines a female as someone “whose biological
reproductive system is developed to produce ova.” It also specifies other terms, including “girl,” “woman,” and “mother.” A similar proposal backed
by several conservative women’s groups was first introduced in May 2022 on
the federal level and reintroduced this Congress in February.

“The Kansas bill would certainly be among the most restrictive ones that
we’ve seen in the country — one of the most expansive, one of the most
extreme and really just one of the most mean spirited and hurtful,” ACLU
of Kansas Executive Director Micah Kubic said before the House vote.
“School districts are probably one of the very first places where this
bill and all of the other ones like it will show up.”

Republicans nationwide have been increasingly targeting transgender issues
to rally their base, message on Capitol Hill and attract moderate women
voters ahead of the 2024 elections.

Education Secretary Miguel Cardona was pressed by Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-
Ga.) to answer “what is a woman” during an April hearing about the
Education Department’s fiscal 2024 budget. Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.)
led the same line of questioning against Ketanji Brown Jackson during her nomination for the Supreme Court last year.

And in Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ rebuttal to President Joe
Biden’s State of the Union Address, she described the president as “the
first man to surrender his presidency to a woke mob that can’t even tell
you what a woman is.”

House Republicans also used their slim majority to pass a bill to restrict transgender students from playing on women’s sports teams — a rebuke to
the Biden administration’s Title IX athletics proposal unveiled in April.

The new rule would make categorical transgender sports bans illegal and
allow transgender girls to play on girls sports teams, but with some limitations. The rule acknowledges competition levels, fairness and a
school’s interest in preventing injuries especially in contact sports.

“Even if you look at Biden’s Title IX proposed rule on sports, there is a recognition that there are differences between men and women,” said May Mailman, senior legal fellow at the Independent Women’s Law Center, which
has pushed for federal bills and the one in Kansas. “You can’t say women
are deserving of protection, but we don’t know what women are.”

Women’s groups and conservative political leaders say the “bill of rights”
laws are needed to protect sex-separated spaces like prisons and domestic violence shelters.

Lauren Bone, who served as legal director for the Women’s Liberation
Front, which is backing the measures, said they are not meant to ostracize
or harm people. She said there is a pressing need for definitions of sex
and gender identity that people struggle to define, especially as
lawmakers present legislation with the terms.

“This is codifying everybody’s definition that they already have in their head,” Bone said.

A similar bill is advancing in Montana, where the state legislature is finishing some procedural hurdles for the measure before sending it to Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte, who is expected to sign it over the
objections of one of his sons who identifies as nonbinary.

Unlike Kansas’ proposal, the Montana bill is not rooted in the argument of protecting sex-separated spaces. Instead, LGBTQ advocates say the bill
looks to advance and make permanent restrictions on transgender, nonbinary
and intersex people that started with 2021 legislation from GOP state Sen.
Carl Glimm that made it onerous for them to change their sex designation
on their birth certificate. Glimm has said the bill is necessary because
people conflate sex and gender.

Medical associations, including the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Medical Association, support gender-affirming care for
adolescents, which rarely, if ever, includes surgery for children. But Gianforte has pressed for legislation that would ban the use of public
funds for gender-affirming care for minors, preferring they make the
decision as adults.

If the state clears a binary definition of sex, the Montana ACLU said
school districts and other agencies caught between conflicting state and federal laws could risk their federal funding.

“This bill would likely jeopardize $7.5 billion of federal funds — which
is about half of Montana’s budget — because these definitions do not
comport with federal regulations and the existing Civil Rights Act,” said Keegan Medrano, ACLU Montana’s director of policy and advocacy. “This
impacts universities, schools and other elements where federal funds are currently being accessed by Montana.”

Civil rights organizations say if the legislation continues to spread
across the country, transgender, nonbinary and intersex people’s existence
is at risk, according to Liz King, senior education program director at
the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, which represents more
than 200 groups.

“There has been an effort to capitalize on fear mongering around otherness
for a very long time,” King said. “And this is only the latest
manifestation.”

All gender confused people have mental health issues.


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