Kansas’ AG is telling schools they must out trans kids to parents, even with no specific law

TOPEKA, Kan. — Kansas’ attorney general tells public schools to tell parents their children are transgender or nonbinary even when they are away from home, though Kansas is not among the states with a law explicitly saying they must do so .

Republican Kris Kobach’s action was his latest move to restrict transgender rights, following his successful efforts last year to temporarily block Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly’s administration from changing sex listings on birth certificates and driver’s licenses of transgender people to reflect their gender identity. It’s also part of a trend of GOP attorneys general asserting their authority on culture war issues without a specific state law.

Kobach argues that not disclosing when a child is socially transitioning or identifying as non-binary at school violates parental rights. He sent letters to six school districts and the state association for local school board members in December, and followed up with a public statement Thursday after four districts, all in northeastern Kansas, failed to rewrite their policies.

Letters from the Kansas attorney general to the superintendents of three Kansas City-area districts, the superintendent of Topeka and the Kansas Association of School Boards accused them of “capturing to woke gender ideology.” His letters did not say what he would do if not specifically requiring teachers and administrators to exclude transgender and non-binary students.

LGBTQ+ rights advocates saw the letters as a call for policies that put transgender and non-binary youth in physical danger, but also as an attempt to tell transgender people they are not welcome. Jordan Smith, leader of the Kansas chapter of the LGBTQ+ rights group Parasol Patrol, said forced outings will cause more anxiety among students and even push some back into the closet.

“It’s like they don’t want us to exist in public places,” said Smith, who is non-binary.

Five states have laws requiring schools to inform parents if their children use different pronouns, socially transition to a gender other than the one assigned at birth or present as nonbinary, according to the Movement Advancement Project, which promotes the rights of supports transgender people. Another six have laws that encourage this, the project says.

Kansas is not on either list. A bill introduced last year would ban schools from using preferred pronouns for a student under 18 without written permission from a parent or guardian, but it did not clear a Senate committee.

Republican lawmakers passed legislation over Kelly’s veto, which ended the state’s legal recognition of transgender and nonbinary identities by defining men and women for legal purposes based on a person’s “reproductive anatomy,” identified at birth. But Republican Sen. Renee Erickson of Wichita, an outspoken advocate and former high school principal, said it does not address whether schools should inform parents about a child’s gender identity at school.

Erickson said she now supports seeing the bill before a Senate committee, saying it addresses a “policy gap.”

“Parents have the right to know what affects their child. They are integral, if not the most important, in helping their child grow and develop with the values ​​the parent wants,” she said.

But Kobach did not cite Kansas law in his letters to the association of state school boards, the Topeka school district and the Kansas City, Shawnee Mission and Olathe school districts in the Kansas City area. Instead, he cited U.S. Supreme Court rulings dating back to 1923 that he said affirmed the right of parents to control how their children are raised. His office released copies Thursday.

He told each of the four districts that their policies regarding transgender students violated parents’ rights and said two other districts in the Wichita area quickly rewrote their policies after his letter arrived. In his letter to the school board group, he noted that it provides legal assistance to local districts.

“It would be unimaginably arrogant to hide something with such grave consequences from the very people (parents) who are charged by both law and nature with ensuring the long-term well-being of a child,” Kobach wrote in each of the letters.

State attorneys general serve as lead attorneys for state governments, and most also oversee at least some criminal prosecutions. But they are also looking outward, and Kobach’s letters were not the first to issue warnings that were not based on a specific state law.

Last year, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sent requests to at least two medical providers not operating in his state for information about providing gender-affirming care as part of an investigation, although it is not clear which Texas law would relate to this. Washington state’s attorney general there invoked a law to block Seattle Children’s Hospital from complying, and QueerMed, a Georgia-based telehealth provider, said on its website that it won’t comply.

As for Kobach, Tom Alonzo, an LGBTQ+ rights advocate in Kansas City, Kansas, argued that the Kansas attorney general is seeking the “intentional marginalization” of transgender people.

“There’s no excuse for it,” he said as he occupied a table at the Statehouse on Thursday. “I was a gay kid hiding in high school. I remember how ugly high school can be when you’re not there.”

While the Kansas City, Kansas, district declined comment, the other three districts said they deal with transgender and nonbinary students on a case-by-case basis and try to work with parents. The Topeka District expressed confidence that its practices are legal. The four districts are among the largest in Kansas, serving more than 88,000 students or 18% of the state’s public school total.

The strongest response came from Shawnee Mission Superintendent Michelle Hubbard in her district’s response in December. She said that “it is rarely the case” that students seek something that their parents are “completely against.”

She also chided Kobach for not citing actual cases in the district where parents’ rights were violated, and suggested he was relying on “misinformation” from “partisan sources.” She called his use of woke “as an insult” disappointing in an attorney general.

“We are not caricatures of the polarized media, but rather real people working very hard despite the intense pressure on public schools,” Hubbard wrote.

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Mulvihill reported from Cherry Hill, New Jersey.