A ban in Kansas on gender-affirming care also would bar advocacy for kids’ social transitions
TOPEKA, Kan. — A proposed ban in Kansas on gender-affirming care for minors would also prevent government employees from promoting such care — or even promoting children’s social transition.
Teachers and social workers who support LGBTQ+ rights worry that they will be punished or fired for helping children exploring their gender identity.
Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly vetoed the proposed ban, and top Republicans expected Friday that the Republican Party-controlled Legislature will try to override her action before lawmakers adjourn for the year on Tuesday. Their bill last month appeared to have the two-thirds majority needed in both chambers to override a veto, but that could depend on all Republicans being present and none of them crossing over.
Supporters of the bill said the provision now under criticism is intended to ensure that banned care — puberty blockers, hormone treatments and surgeries — are not continued to be promoted with taxpayer money or other state resources.
But compared to the restrictions or bans on gender-affirming care in 20 other states, the Kansas proposal appears more sweeping because of the broad language against promoting social transition that applies to state employees “whose official duties include the care of children,” they say. LGBTQ+ rights activists.
“That’s not something we’ve seen before,” said Omar Gonzalez-Pagan, an attorney for the LGBTQ+ rights group Lambda Legal. “It really allows us to look behind the scenes at what the true motivation behind this bill is, which has nothing to do with protecting the health and safety of young people and everything to do with attacking transgender people and erasure of transgender identity.”
About 300,000 youth ages 13 to 17 identify as transgender in the U.S., according to estimates from the Williams Institute, an LGBTQ+ research center at UCLA Law. It is estimated that in Kansas about 2,100 youth in that age group identify as transgender.
Other provisions of the proposed ban would prevent gender-affirming care from taking place on state properties and would prohibit groups that receive state funds from advocating medications or surgeries to treat a child whose gender identity differs from the sex assigned at birth.
Brittany Jones, an attorney and policy director for the conservative Kansas Family Voice, said courts have consistently ruled that a state has “the right to determine what is done with its money.”
“This does not prevent any child from going through a social transition, but it cannot happen at the behest of a government agency,” she said in an email.
In statehouses across the US, Republicans have promoted restrictions on gender-affirming care by portraying it as experimental and the potential source of long-term medical problems.
Supporters of the Kansas proposal have repeatedly pointed to the National Health Service of England’s recent decision to stop prescribing puberty blockers as a routine treatment for minors seeking gender reassignment.
“Obviously, deep down, we believe that they shouldn’t be steering students toward those kinds of things, that they should be looking at all the alternative counseling and things like that,” said Sen. Mike Thompson, a conservative senator from Kansas. Urban area Republican.
Such bans are opposed by major U.S. medical groups, which have strongly endorsed gender-affirming care for minors. At least 200 Kansas medical and mental health professionals signed a letter to lawmakers opposing the proposed ban.
Young transgender Kansas residents have repeatedly said that their transitions have dramatically improved their lives. Parents of transgender children have described gender-affirming care as essential for combating severe depression and suicidal tendencies.
But as troubling as they and others find children’s loss of access to gender-affirming care, they have focused in recent weeks on the provision against promoting social transition as particularly frightening to them.
“I have learned to uplift students and let them know that I will support them 100 percent, no matter who they are,” Riley Long, a transgender special education teacher, said at a news conference in the Kansas City area. “This bill makes it seem like it’s only okay to listen to my cisgender students, and that my transgender students are automatically wrong.”
According to the bill, social transition includes “changing one’s preferred pronouns or manner of dress.” The measure does not define what promoting it entails.
The Kansas State Department of Education says public school teachers and administrators are not legally considered state employees. However, teachers who support transgender rights are not confident that they will not be affected by the ban – or that opponents of transgender rights would not attack their jobs anyway.
Isaac Johnson, who is pursuing a degree in social work and just completed an internship at Topeka Public Schools, said problems can arise from interactions like the one he had with a girl who told him, “I don’t really feel like a girl.” I just feel like a boy.”
“All I said in response was, ‘Well, what does that mean? What does it mean to be a girl?’ Johnson, who is transgender, told reporters during a news conference at the Statehouse on Thursday. “I’m afraid that, according to the law, this is because I didn’t explicitly come out and say, ‘No, you’re a girl. You will always be a girl’, which will be seen as promoting social transition.”
Transgender Kansas residents and parents of transgender children also believe they have even more reason to be nervous after Republican lawmakers last year overrode Kelly’s veto of a measure that ended state legal recognition of people’s gender identities transgenders. The most visible impact of the law is that it will prevent transgender people from changing their driver’s license and birth certificate to reflect their gender identity — something that was not the focus of last year’s debate.
Aaron Roberts, pastor of a United Church of Christ congregation in the Kansas City area, said support from social workers was crucial for his transgender daughter before she joined his family out of foster care. She is now a student.
“All the support she received from those wonderful social workers who went out of their way to help her navigate her gender identity – this bill wipes them away,” he said.