Transgender Kansans and their advocates are bracing for another fight with Republican lawmakers in 2025 over whether trans minors should be allowed access to gender-affirming care. Despite Republicans enacting a series of anti-trans laws in 2023, a ban on gender transition surgeries, puberty blockers and hormone treatment for youth has proven elusive, as lawmakers have failed to override Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly’s veto each of the last two years. Now, with expanded Republican supermajorities in the House and Senate and most GOP members who opposed the ban last session leaving office in January, party leaders say they’re confident they’ll have the numbers to outlaw treatment they see as objectionable. “Trans surgeries on minors? It will be back. We only missed that by one or two votes in the House, right?” Senate President Ty Masterson, an Andover Republican, told reporters. “(The Senate) overrode it then and I think this caucus is probably stronger in that opinion than the prior one. So that would definitely be back.” Republican lawmakers plan to introduce legislation next session banning gender-affirming care, but the specific provisions included in that bill have not yet been made public. The renewed momentum behind their push comes as the U.S. Supreme Court weighs a challenge to state-level bans on gender-affirming care. In Washington, U.S. Sen. Roger Marshall plans to take the care ban federally by introducing a bill that would fine doctors, nurses and mental health professionals up to $100,000 for treating minors. What’s at stake? Transition surgeries are exceedingly rare for patients under 18. Puberty blockers and hormone treatments are much more common for trans youth, along with counseling to help them socially transition. “For me, when I was like 12 or 13 and starting puberty blockers, it was really important for me to have that option, to talk through it with my doctor,” said Adam Kellogg, a transgender 21-year-old student studying psychology at the University of Kansas. “Not having that option would have sincerely hurt me and my family. It would have made it much harder for me to continue going to school, to continue living a normal life as I really wanted to,” Kellogg said. Conservative opponents to gender-affirming care argue they want to protect children from the potential long-term consequences of treatments they call experimental and say could lead to regret later in life. Kellogg said the danger is in denying vulnerable children access to that care, which is only provided after a screening process and with parental consent. “The read that I get from the Legislature is that they want to prevent these conversations so that kids just decide that they’re not going to be trans anymore,” Kellogg said. Without medical intervention, those children are more likely to turn to dangerous methods of control such as self-harm, he said. The country’s leading medical groups, including the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics, say transition care is safe and should remain available to minors. According to the Human Rights Campaign, an LGBTQ+ advocacy group, 26 states have enacted bans on gender-affirming care, including Arkansas and Montana, where courts have blocked their enforcement. Last month, a Missouri circuit court judge upheld the state’s ban on gender-affirming care, which also affects adults by preventing Missouri Medicaid dollars from covering transition treatment. Oral arguments began Wednesday in a Supreme Court case brought by the Biden administration challenging the constitutionality of a Tennessee law that bans gender-affirming care for minors. A ruling striking down that law would cast other states’ sweeping bans into question but would likely preserve lawmakers’ ability to restrict access to care. “It’s hard to know what version of bill that we’re going to see get traction because Kansas has seen a range of minor gender-affirming healthcare bills be introduced — some that would be much smaller in their impact on the community,” said D.C. Hiegert, a transgender individual and staff attorney for the ACLU of Kansas. For example, a prohibition specifically on transition surgery for minors would impact far fewer people than an alternative version like the one that was nearly enacted into law earlier this year, Hiegert said. Advocates worried that bill could potentially even limit access to mental healthcare and affirming conversations with school counselors. Another version of the ban introduced in 2023 aimed to prohibit access to care for adults between the ages of 18 and 20 as well as minors. What comes next? New Kansas House Minority Leader Brandon Woodard, a Lenexa Democrat and the first openly LGBTQ+ member to serve as party leader in state history, said Democrats will look for opportunities to win over Republican members who might see a ban on gender-affirming care as government overreach. “We’ll have to get to know our new colleagues,” Woodard said. “I continue to have faith that when people hear the issues — last year’s bill was one of the most extreme in the country, and because we were able to defeat that — because of that on issues like gender-affirming care, like access to ballot drop boxes, we’re going to have to come to the negotiating table. Last session, the Senate approved the override of Kelly’s veto on the gender-affirming care ban 27-13 but the 82-43 margin in the House fell two votes short. Next session, Republicans will have two additional members in the Senate and three more in the House. “There will be times that we might not be able to stop something, but we can weaken the policy and make sure that they realize the true harm that it could cause Kansans,” Woodard said. Republicans successfully overrode Kelly’s veto last year of a bill that barred trans people from single-sex spaces and has been used to justify a prohibition on changing gender markers on state-issued IDs and other official documents. Lawmakers also overrode her veto of a bill banning trans athletes from competing in girls’ and women’s sports. House Speaker Dan Hawkins, a Wichita Republican, said he believes Kansans overwhelmingly support efforts to prevent minors from receiving gender-affirming treatment. “It’s a priority for the people,” Hawkins said. Jae Moyer, an LGBTQ+ activist in Johnson County, said that’s the wrong lesson to take from Republicans’ strong showing at the polls last month. “I don’t think it’s because a majority of voters care about these culture war topics, right?” Moyer said. “People care about the money in their pocket. People care about certain other hot-button issues . . . I don’t believe that anyone is giving our elected officials the go-ahead to discriminate against people just on the basis of a certain identity that they hold.” Rampant misinformation about gender-affirming care and the use of buzzwords such as “mutilation” are scare tactics used to obfuscate the prejudice behind anti-trans legislation, Moyer said. “At the end of the day, you take away that type of healthcare and what you’re really doing is you’re infringing on a person’s medical decision between their doctor, their parents and themselves,” Moyer said, drawing a parallel to the 2022 constitutional referendum when Kansans overwhelmingly voted against an amendment that would have given state lawmakers the power to restrict or ban abortion. Previous versions of the proposed ban have included provisions that would strip doctors of their medical licensure if they were found to have provided gender-affirming care to minors. Beth Oller, a family medicine physician in Stockton who provides gender-affirming care, said such a law could have a chilling effect on medical professionals and students who would otherwise consider practicing medicine in Kansas. “When you look at a state you’re thinking about going to practice in and you see that they have criminalized evidence-based medicine, it makes you wonder what’s next,” Oller said. “Even if I don’t provide this care, do I really want to go practice in a state that when people are doing their jobs, they could decide to criminalize what I do or take my medical license?”
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