Kansas Republicans have finally passed a bill to ban gender-affirming care for transgender minors. Only a lawsuit can stop the ban from becoming law. 

That means no puberty blockers, no hormone treatments and no gender-affirming surgeries for people until they are 18 years old. The bill also prohibits state funds from being used for the health care practice.

State employees also are banned from promoting social transitioning. Critics of the bill say schoolteachers wouldn’t be allowed to use a student’s preferred pronouns in class, for example, because the bill defines social transitioning as “presenting as a member of the opposite sex, including the changing of an individual’s preferred pronouns or manner of dress.”

Gov. Laura Kelly vetoed the bill on Feb. 11, but Republicans overrode the veto on Tuesday. 

Children already receiving this care have until Dec. 31 at the latest to stop. Doctors must create plans to stop the care and don’t have to immediately stop the procedure if medical records show immediately stopping would cause harm to the children. 

“This is a fork in the road — I believe — in who we are as a people, as a state,” said Rep. Ron Bryce, a Coffeyville Republican, who supported the ban. “We need to follow what is effective (and) what is safe and not follow an ideology.” 

Banning this form of health care is a top priority for Republicans.

Democrats tried to amend the bill before it passed weeks ago. They tried to only ban surgeries and still allow for hormone treatments or puberty blockers. They tried to lower the age of the ban so people at least 15 years old could still access the health care. But Republicans rejected every amendment because they say gender-affirming care doesn’t work. 

House Speaker Dan Hawkins said overriding the veto protects “Kansas kids from the irreversible harms of experimental gender transition surgeries and medicines.”

There is evidence that suggests gender-affirming care does work. An Associated Press article found that only 1% of people actually regret their transitioning. Other studies link the care to lower rates of suicide and depression. Democrats raised those points, but Republicans weren’t swayed. 

Rep. Mark Schreiber, an Emporia Republican, said transgender children aren’t choosing this. It’s a medical diagnosis. 

“We don’t teach kids to have cancer, we don’t teach them to have birth defects and we don’t teach them to have a medical condition called gender dysphoria,” he said. 

Schreiber was the only Republican to join Democrats in opposing the ban. 

The veto and override were the final steps in the legislative process, but the bill is not guaranteed to become law. Democrats have already promised to sue to block this bill. 

D.C. Hiegert, civil liberties fellow with the American Civil Liberties Union of Kansas, told The Beacon that this bill is unconstitutional in a number of ways. 

The bill specifically bans gender-affirming care for transgender children, not children with other diagnoses that require puberty blockers or hormone treatments. Singling out this group is discrimination, Hiegert said. 

The bill bans government employees from promoting social transitioning. Telling someone how they can or can’t talk to people is a violation of the First Amendment, Hiegert said. The bill also violates Kansans’ constitutional right to bodily autonomy — that same right that guarantees women the right to an abortion, they argue. 

States can regulate health care — they do it all the time. Any legal challenge could easily fail and the bill could become law. While it isn’t clear how the legal challenge will play out, the Kansas Supreme Court has a liberal majority, if any possible lawsuit goes that far. 

Democrats knew that this bill would pass before the final veto override vote. 

“We may have lost this battle today,” House Minority Leader Brandon Woodard, a Lenexa Democrat, said even before the vote became final. But he said the state won’t turn its back on LGBTQ people. 

“No legislature, no elected body, can legislate away our very existence,” Woodard said.