Transgender KC residents fear attacks from both sides of state line: ‘Where do we go now?’

Before being elected as Missouri’s first openly transgender lawmaker last year, Rep. Wick Thomas did not talk much about their gender identity while campaigning in Kansas City. Thomas, a Democrat who uses they/them pronouns, would rather talk with voters about their work in the Kansas City community. Cleaning up public parks, repopulating native plants and advocating for homeless neighbors. Schools, libraries, the arts. But amid an onslaught of legislation aimed at the LGBTQ community, Thomas said the Missouri General Assembly appears more willing to regulate who they are instead of advancing the state. “We’ve always been here. Every continent, every community, every time period,” Thomas said, delivering a message to the Kansas City transgender community. “And regardless of legislation, we will always be here — so don’t let this steal your joy.” Transgender residents living across the sprawling Kansas City metro are straddling two states pushing to restrict their health care. In Missouri, where Kansas City voters just elected Wick to the state House, Republican lawmakers held a marathon hearing on Monday over bills that would strengthen the state’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors and permanently place restrictions on trans student-athletes. In neighboring Kansas, Republicans, who have also already placed restrictions on transgender student-athletes, are looking to finally override Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly’s veto over legislation to restrict transgender health care. Last week, a bill banning gender-affirming care for minors became the first piece of legislation to pass the Kansas House and Senate this year. Beyond limiting access to care, the efforts in both states have created an environment in which transgender residents in Kansas City — and sometimes the doctors who provide their health care — can feel unwelcome. Some have felt forced to flee Missouri and some health care groups have already stopped providing the treatment altogether due to fear of legal consequences. Nyla Foster knows what it’s like to have to juggle both sides of the state line for her safety. Foster, 35, is the executive director of Trans Women of Color Collective, a trans rights advocacy group based in Kansas City. “It’s a traumatic experience just driving, you know, along the borders and in between them,” Foster said. “Sometimes we go to Kansas for comfort and safety. Sometimes we have to go to Missouri for that. And now it seems like, where do we go now?” Kansas City Chiefs won’t have to wait long for rematch against Super Bowl LIX opponent February 11, 2025 9:54 AM How does Chiefs’ 2025 Super Bowl loss compare to other big game blowouts? A look back February 11, 2025 12:41 PM Was it heads or tails? What did Kendrick Lamar sing first? 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It “just almost feels like they’re out to get you…it’s important to know — like, yes, things feel safe inside Kansas City, but there’s people outside of it trying to harm the community.” Landon Patterson, 26, poses for a picture at the Missouri Capitol on Monday, Feb. 3, 2025. Patterson spoke about her experience receiving gender-affirming care in Kansas City. Kacen Bayless [email protected] Despite fear and opposition from members of the transgender community, Republicans in both states appear emboldened to restrict access to gender-affirming care. Lawmakers have largely framed the legislative effort as a way to protect children, arguing that people should have to wait until they turn 18 before starting transgender health care. “This is something that my constituents have been asking, you know — are we going to make sure that this is completely prohibited and do away with the sunset,” Missouri Rep. Ben Baker, a Neosho Republican, said during a hearing on Monday over his bill to permanently ban gender-affirming care for minors. The push in Missouri comes nearly two years after lawmakers passed a ban on gender-affirming care for minors and barred transgender athletes from playing sports that match their gender identity. Both laws are poised to expire in 2027. Republican lawmakers want to make those bans permanent, removing both expiration dates. They’re also pushing to remove a grandfather clause that allowed minors to continue taking hormone therapy or puberty blockers if they were already prescribed them. The American Medical Association has said trans and nonbinary gender identities are normal variations of human identity and expression. But while supporters of the gender-affirming care bans routinely point to surgeries, receiving gender-affirming care doesn’t necessarily mean undergoing surgery. A 2017 paper in the journal Endocrine Practice found that most transgender patients seen by endocrinology clinics have not undergone any type of gender-affirming surgery. About 35% of patients had had at least one surgery. Republican lawmakers, including in Missouri and Kansas, have also amplified the stories of people who have received gender-affirming care and now regret it. However, a New York Times analysis from 2023 found that most people who transition do not change course. Others point to publicly available polling, including a 2023 poll from Saint Louis University and YouGov, which indicated limited support for gender-affirming care for minors in Missouri. The U.S. Supreme Court is also poised to rule on a case that could decide the constitutionality of gender-affirming care bans across the country. But while some lawmakers have framed the legislation as a way to protect kids, Angela Turpin, a pediatric endocrinologist who has practiced in the Kansas City area for 20 years, told Kansas lawmakers that undergoing gender-affirming care is a lengthy process. By the time they seek treatment, children have typically known for at least four years that they have non-conforming gender identity, she said. Just to get in the door, she said, the patient must have a letter from a mental health provider confirming their diagnosis of gender dysphoria. “It is a very, very gradual process,” Turpin said. “No one is started on an adult dose of testosterone or an adult dose of estrogen. These are extremely slow, over the course of like two years that you would gradually be working up on hormones.” Inside the Kansas, Missouri push All told, Missouri lawmakers have filed 32 anti-LGBTQ bills this year, among the most in the nation, according to a database from the American Civil Liberties Union that tracks legislation nationwide. Other Missouri bills that could receive focus this year include measures to: restrict transgender residents from using bathrooms that match their gender identity, ban drag shows, require teachers, under threat of criminal penalties, to inform parents if a student discusses their sexual identity and limit how transgender people can change their IDs. Across the state line in Kansas, lawmakers have filed four anti-LGBTQ bills, according to the ACLU. Kansas Republicans have also taken action in recent years to erode transgender rights, overriding Gov. Kelly’s veto to enact laws banning trans athletes from competing in girls’ and women’s sports and barring trans people from single-sex spaces, a move that has been used to justify the state prohibiting people from changing the gender markers on their IDs and other official documents. But efforts to ban gender-affirming care for minors and strip the licensure of physicians caught providing it to them have come up short each of the last two years, thanks to a handful of Republican lawmakers who have broken rank to sustain Kelly’s veto. This year, with expanded supermajorities, GOP leaders are confident they have the votes to prevent teens from being given puberty blockers and hormone treatments. Anthony Alvarez, a transgender student at the University of Kansas, said the care he received throughout his medical transition starting at age 16 was “lifesaving.” He told lawmakers that while he was transitioning, his parents asked if he would feel more comfortable relocating to a state where transgender people are more widely accepted. “I repeatedly told them no,” Alvarez said. “The people that I loved and the life that I had made was in Kansas. Now, as I approach graduation, I find myself asking those same questions again. I love Kansas and I would like to stay here for the rest of my life.” “Laws like this set a precedent, and they also make me incredibly sympathetic to people that are in my situation that would be affected by it,” he said. For Wick, being elected as Missouri’s first openly transgender lawmaker isn’t something they think about that often. It’s just part of their lived experience, they said. “I recognize, though, for other people that this may be a groundbreaking moment and I really respect that,” Wick said. Wick then referenced the young kids who planned to show up at the Missouri Capitol to testify against the legislation banning gender-affirming care. “I was where they were, you know, I was on that side of the aisle,” Wick said. “So I hope that they realize that they can be on this side of the desk as well. This is the people’s house and that should be open to everybody.”