ACLU of Kansas Statement on Bill Undermining Transgender Kansans Privacy and Safety at the DMV and in Bathrooms

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

January 28, 2026

CONTACT: Esmie Tseng, Communications Director, [email protected]

Kansas – An anti-trans bill passed the Kansas legislature Wednesday evening, after being rushed through both chambers. The original bill (HB 2426) required the state of Kansas to invalidate legally issued birth certificates and driver’s licenses to depict strictly someone’s sex assigned at birth. Even after 200 people submitted opposition testimony against the ID provision, the House Committee on Judiciary amended the bill to also apply to bathrooms, requiring such private spaces to be used only according to an individual’s sex assigned at birth. The committee members then stripped and inserted the contents of the bill into a separate “shell bill” (SB 244) that had passed in a previous, different form.

“This bill is about forcing people into the wrong bathrooms and opening up all Kansans to scrutiny and gender policing by strangers,” said Logan DeMond, ACLU of Kansas Policy Director. “Bathroom bans are grounded in prejudice and misinformation, and they don’t actually make anyone safer. Transgender people are already vulnerable to violence, especially in restrooms, and this bill layers prospective physical violence on top of the existing privacy violation of forced changes to identification documents. Transgender Kansas should have protection and dignity in our state instead of persecution. But rather than addressing the real problems everyday Kansans face and trying to make people’s lives better, politicians continue to focus their lawmaking powers on a minority, bending the very rules in the statehouse to do so.”

“This bill is exactly the kind of politicized, governmental overreach that the Kansas Constitution seeks to protect us against,” said Micah Kubic, ACLU of Kansas Executive Director. “When Attorney General Kobach failed to see his extremist interpretation of a vague law accepted by the Courts last year, he ran to the legislature to try and to have another go at undermining constitutionally protected rights. We are disappointed to see a policy adopted that is based on misinformation against our trans and intersex family and friends, intruding into the most private corners of our lives.

“This bill undermines our state’s strong constitutional protections against government overreach and persecution. It subjects people to unacceptable privacy violations and puts them in harm’s way. Discriminatory laws like this bill violate the fundamental rights guaranteed by the state constitution. They contradict what it means to be a Kansan.”

Kansas lawmakers introduced HB 2426 on the first day of the 2026 session. The bill came after extensive advocacy from AG Kobach requesting a special session last fall to change the law following a series of losses in the courts.

Previously in the 2023 session, the Kansas state legislature passed SB 180 over a veto by Governor Laura Kelly. The bill was framed as a meager effort to protect women’s rights, but instead attempted to codify into law outdated, inaccurate, and underinclusive definitions of sex and families and to absolve the state of its responsibility to not discriminate against transgender people. However, the law had no meaningful application or implementation mechanism.

In July 2023, AG Kobach filed a lawsuit in state court against the Kansas Department of Revenue, the government agency that issues driver’s licenses, asking the court to interpret SB 180 to prohibit transgender people from changing their gender markers on their driver’s licenses. The ACLU of Kansas, the ACLU, and Stinson LLP successfully intervened in the case on behalf of five transgender Kansans. In June 2025, the Kansas Court of Appeals unanimously reversed a trial court’s injunction preventing changes to gender markers and also found that there was no evidence “beyond mere speculation” to the trial court’s finding that allowing transgender people to change their gender markers would somehow impair the identification of criminal suspects. The Court of Appeals also held that AG Kobach had not shown a substantial likelihood of prevailing on his view that SB 180 requires all new and renewed driver’s licenses to list the driver’s sex assigned at birth. AG Kobach appealed the decision.

In September, the Kansas Supreme Court denied AG Kobach’s appeal, allowing the appellate court’s order to go into effect, and KDOR has since resumed making gender changes to driver’s licenses. In October, AG Kobach’s office filed an additional motion in the district court requesting KDOR to maintain a list of changes made. Last week, a district court found that the AG’s motion to the district court was very improper and imposed symbolic monetary sanctions of $1 each against AG Kobach and Anthony Powell.

# # #

About the ACLU of Kansas: The ACLU of Kansas is the statewide affiliate of the national American Civil Liberties Union. The ACLU of Kansas is dedicated to preserving and advancing the civil rights and legal freedoms guaranteed by the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights. For more information, visit our website at www.aclukansas.org.