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Update: The 2024 veto session has ended. Read this story to see what passed and what didn’t.

Gov. Laura Kelly’s vetoes of bills that would restrict gender-affirming care for children and abortion rights are setting up override votes that will test the unity of conservatives in the Legislature. 

One part of the Kansas legislative session ended in the early morning hours of April 6. Legislators take a break of a few weeks so the governor can veto bills or sign them into law.  Then they return to Topeka April 25 to try and override those vetoes. 

An override needs 84 votes in the House and 27 in the Senate. The Beacon will keep updating this article as new vetoes stack up. 

In 2024, Laura Kelly has vetoed:

• Multiple tax cut packages
• A ban on gender-affirming care
• A tax credit for pregnancy resource centers
• Two abortion bills
• Two election bills
• A ban on single-use plastic restrictions
• A bill limiting drone technology from countries of concern
• More serious penalties for hurting or killing police dogs
• New bail bond requirements
• New government oversight requirements
• Deregulation of hair sugaring
• Changes to historic horse racing funds

Tax cuts 

Kansas Republicans made tax cuts a top priority in this year’s legislative session. First, they pushed for a flat-tax on income that was vetoed and died. That tax cut was controversial because both Republican and Democratic lawmakers said it favored the rich. 

Then a second tax plan had income tax cuts, cuts on taxes Social Security benefits, food sales tax cuts. Kelly supports all of those tax cuts, but she vetoed the plan because it cost too much. 

She proposed a plan that offers all the same tax cuts with a lower price tag. 

The Republicans’ second tax plan had massive bipartisan support, passing 119-0 in the House. The Senate appears to have the votes to override the veto as well, but only one Senate Democrat voted for the plan. 

Kelly also vetoed a handful of new sales tax exemptions. The bill creates sales tax deductions for some motor vehicle transactions, allows manufacturer’s coupons to be excluded from the sales price to ease the tax hit and other sales tax exemptions. 

“The intent of House Bill 2098 is on the right track to provide Kansans with sales tax relief,” Kelly said in her veto message. “However, the impact these tax cuts would have on the State General Fund cannot be realized without knowing the total cost of all tax bills, including a fair, sustainable, and fiscally responsible tax relief package. ”

That bill has a comfortable veto-proof majority in both the House and Senate — passing 102-17 and 34-1. 

Gender-affirming care ban

Kansas Republicans passed a ban on puberty blockers, hormone treatment and surgery for transgender youth. 

Republicans argue transgender kids don’t appreciate the consequences of gender-affirming care and say the medical treatment is ineffective. Democrats counter that research shows that kind of care improves a transgender child’s mental health and lowers the likelihood of suicide. 

The bill passed 82-39 in the House and 27-13 in the Senate. As it currently stands, the House is two votes short of a veto override, but four lawmakers missed the original vote. Republicans appear to have the votes needed to override Kelly’s veto and impose the ban. Yet the bill dies if even one vote flips in Democrats’ favor. 

Pregnancy resource centers 

Lawmakers created a new tax break for pregnancy resource centers. Supporters of those centers say they provide important resources to mothers, like diapers or other goods. They want a tax break to encourage more donations to help mothers with unplanned pregnancies. 

Opponents of these centers say they are anti-abortion propaganda centers posing as medical centers and that they manipulate women at vulnerable times.

“Kansas voters overwhelmingly signaled to politicians that they should stop inserting themselves between women and their private medical decisions,” Kelly said in her veto statement. 

Republicans appear to have the votes to override the veto. The Senate has the votes and the House was just one vote short of a veto-proof majority when it first passed. Two Republicans missed that vote. 

Abortion

A pair of bills related to abortion were vetoed. 

One bill would require abortion providers to ask why someone was getting an abortion. Republicans said the survey is optional and provides valuable information. Kelly said the questions are intrusive. 

That bill passed 81-39 in the House and 27-13 in the Senate. The House is three votes short of an override, but five lawmakers missed the original vote, including three Republicans. 

The second bill criminalizes abortion coercion. That makes it illegal to try to force someone to get an abortion through physical or financial threat. Withholding key documents, like passports, also qualifies. 

Kelly vetoed the bill, saying extortion is already illegal. She also said the bill is too vague and could criminalize people who “are being confided in by their loved ones or simply sharing their expertise as a health care provider.”

The bill passed 82-37 in the House and 27-11 in the Senate. The House is two votes short but six lawmakers didn’t cast a vote the first time around. 

Elections

Two election bills were vetoed by the Democratic governor. The first bill:

• Requires county election officers to record the names of people who drop off ballots for others. It’s an attempt to limit ballot harvesting, which is when one person brings in a bunch of other people’s ballots. By recording the names of those who drop off ballots, counties could see if someone was dropping off more ballots than they are allowed to. Ten ballots is the current limit. 
• Removes the requirement that political advertisements list who is the treasurer of a campaign. 

This bill is currently nine votes short of a veto override in the House and one vote short in the Senate. Both chambers have Republicans who missed the first vote, but multiple Republicans have broken from party ranks to vote against this bill. It has an uphill battle to become law. The second bill:

• Prohibits federal funds to be used for elections unless the state Legislature approved the use of that money. 
• Clarifies that intentionally impersonating an election official is a crime. Past legislation made impersonating an election official a crime. Voting access groups, like the League of Women Voters, then stopped helping people register to vote, fearing that they could be impersonating an election official. The past law was taken to the Kansas Supreme Court, where justices said it was too vague. This bill was trying to clear up that confusion. 

The proposal is currently short of a veto-proof majority in both the House and Senate. However, multiple Republicans missed the first vote. If they vote along party lines this bill appears to have the votes to become law. 

Republicans pushed these bills in the name of voter security. Kelly said there’s no evidence of voter fraud and these bills only make it harder to run elections. 

Single-use plastic ban

Cities and counties couldn’t ban single-use plastics under this bill. Supporters said a growing patchwork of laws makes it harder for some businesses to operate when the bans exist in some cities but not everywhere in the state. 

Opponents of the bill said the choices should be left to local officials. 

The bill passed the House 72-51 and 24-16 in the Senate. Neither chamber currently has the votes to override the veto. 

Drone technology 

Kansas lawmakers wanted to stop the state from buying drones that have equipment from countries of concern. That means no buying drones from Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia, Venezuela and China (excludingTaiwan). 

The bill also prevents state agencies from contracting goods or services from “foreign principal.” Foreign principal includes countries of concerns as well as other subdivisions, like political parties from those countries. 

Kelly supports squeezing out countries of concern, but she said the bill is just too broad. She said solutions to limit foreign interference are “underway and will address the underlying concerns of this bill. ” 

The plan passed the House 90-30 and the Senate 21-12. The Senate needs six more votes to override the veto with seven lawmakers missing the first vote.

Police dogs

Kansas lawmakers want more jail time for someone who hurts or kills a police dog or horse. A now-vetoed bill would have required 90 days in jail instead of 30. The minimum fine would be $10,000, which doubles the maximum fine of $5,000 under current law. 

“The fact that the current criminal penalties for harming a police animal are lower than other animal cruelty laws is a disgrace to both them and their caretaker officers,” said House Speaker Dan Hawkins. 

Kelly vetoed the bill, saying that abuse of the animals is wrong but that the mandatory minimum sentencing takes away judicial power, the jail time is longer than other crimes without a clear reason and it requires psychological evaluation and anger management courses when other, more serious crimes don’t. 

The bill passed with strong bipartisan support in the House, but it is two votes short of a veto-proof majority in the Senate. 

Bail bonds

Kansas could set a minimum amount someone must pay a bail bond company to be released from jail. But the governor said the minimum doesn’t take into account the type or severity of someone’s crime. 

That bond would be a minimum of 10% of the appearance bond. Half of that needs to be paid before someone can get out before their court date. 

Kelly worries that will hurt low-income Kansas who didn’t commit violent crimes. 

The bill passed 82-41 in the House and 23-10 in the Senate. The House is two votes short with two Republicans who missed the first vote. The Senate is four votes short with seven members missing the original vote, including four Republicans.

Government oversight 

This bill requires any new proposed rule or regulation to get a budget assessment to see if it will cost the state more than $1 million in five years. Expensive rules and regulations are then taken to the Legislature for a vote. Those rules may otherwise be passed by state department heads without getting passed into law. 

The bill was pitched as a way to keep the government spending in check. Rep. Barb Wasinger, a Hays Republican, said the Department of Wildlife and Parks almost eliminated deer hunting season one year. The agency said the regulation would have no cost, but Wasinger said the lack of hunting season would definitely cost the state. 

Opponents of the bill say regulations can be both expensive and necessary to protect people. Some laws also create a gray area where department officials need to make clarifying enforcement rules. 

The bill passed 82-36 in the House and 27-13 in the Senate. Seven lawmakers missed the vote in the House. 

Hair sugaring 

Kansas lawmakers want to remove licensing requirements for sugaring. 

Sugaring removes body hair. It’s when someone mixes water, sugar and lemons to create a room-temperature paste. To start a business doing this, someone must pay for and take thousands of hours to become a licensed cosmetologist. Sugaring is a very small part of that training. 

Kelly vetoed the bill saying deregulating this industry could lead to safety and sanitation concerns. 

The bill passed 71-52 in the House and 38-1 in the Senate. Two representatives missed the House vote, but the bill is still well short of the minimum threshold. 

Historic horse racing 

Historic horse racing is an electronic gambling machine that replays old horse races. People can bet on the winners. Lawmakers want to change where the money from those machines goes. 

The bill eliminates the funding that regulates historic horse racing machines and gives the tax generated from those machines to the Kansas Horse Breeding Development Fund and the Horse Fair Racing Benefit Fund. 

Kelly said she supports the goal of the bill, but it would inadvertently raise taxes on a historic horse racing facility in Wichita. She vetoed it to prevent that from happening. 

The bill has a veto-proof majority and Democratic support in both the House and Senate.