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The supermajority of the Kansas Legislature continues to target LGBTQ+, and especially trans, Kansans. They are ruthless in their efforts to erase queer and trans folks from our state, and too often use their "sincerely held religious beliefs" to justify their discrimination.

Help Mainstream and our partners show our elected officials that hatred has no place in Kansas.

STOP SB244 

We need your help to stop an anti-trans bathroom bill headed to the Governor's desk without any opportunity for public input!

Background:

One of the very first bills to hold a hearing this year wasHB2426 (defining the term "gender" to mean biological sex at birth). With less than 24 hours notice, advocates turned in an amazing 200+ pieces of opponent testimony, showing that Kansans overwhelmingly do not want our legislators to focus on the issue of defining gender.

Two weeks later, the House Judiciary Committee worked the bill, and as expected, the supermajority members of the committee revealed their true purpose of defining gender. Rep. Bob Lewis (*M13%) introduced an amendment that prohibits individuals from using any bathroom outside of their sex defined at birth. In other words, this became a bathroom bill.

Those on the committee called out the complexity of the amendment that was sprung on them, the discrimination that this invites, and the way the public was prevented from participating in what is now essentially a new bill. The attitude of committee chair Rep Susan Humphries (*M0%) towards these concerns was evident: this amendment was going to be pushed through regardless of the lack of transparency. When asked to accept a conceptual amendment (an amendment without official language but rather intended to introduce an idea) offered by Rep Lindsay Vaughn (*M100%) to reduce the negative impact of the bill on transgender and intersex individuals, Humphries illustrated her total power over the process by simplysaying "I don't have to."

Once Lewis' amendment was passed, Humphries then performed the dreaded "gut and go." The amended bill was inserted into SB244 (a completely unrelated bill that passed through the Senate last year) and was then debated on the House floor two days later. After over 5 hours of debate, the House passed SB244 as amended, and then took emergency final action so they could immediately send it to the Senate. The Senate passed it on a concur/nonconcur vote (meaning, no public hearing). The bill now heads to the Governor's desk for what we anticipate will be a veto.

Let's be clear - the majority members of the Kansas Legislature cheated to get their hateful bill passed.

Send your legislator a messagehere.

Here are the details from our partners, Loud Light:

About SB 244:

• Kris Kobach lost his court case to strip transgender Kansans of their ability to have state IDs that accurately reflect who they are. 
• Now he's back in the legislature to take his anti-trans crusade even further with what was originally HB 2426, which would put into law inaccurate definitions relating to gender that will be used to discriminate broadly and create unsafe environments for trans, intersex, and gender diverse individuals. 
• This bill would again strip all gender marker changes from Driver's Licenses, but would also include a birth certificate ban and make both of these retroactive, requiring any current documents to be reissued by the state government.  
• Rep. Lewis amended this bill to include a bathroom ban for trans people, banning "multiple occupancy private spaces" that are gender inclusive (regardless of privacy standards) in public buildings, and creates a civil penalities condition- essentially deputizing any nosy person to be authorized enforcers of the bathroom police.    
• Rep. Humphries took a completely unrelated bill (SB 244) that had already gone through the legislative process, removed the original bill text and added the amended bill text from HB 2426 into it, known as "gut and go". This means that this bill skipped the entire committee process, and there is no opportunity for the public to go on the record as opposing this bill. 
• On 1/28, after over five hours of debate, the House declared emergency final action to pass SB 244 and the Senate immediately followed suit. 

What can you do? The Governor is expected to veto this bill, so we must tell lawmakers to SUPPORT the veto to STOP THIS BILL. 

Personalize your email to your legislators by using the form below! Adding in a personal story is especially important to show legislators that these are real people messaging them and it isn't just a computerized bulk email. 

Please use your own words, but here's some helpful things to remember when writing your legislator:

• Showing your ID shouldn't be a dangerous act. Transgender people face pervasive discrimination and hate-based violence just for being themselves. You need legal documents to get a job, open a bank account, go to school, or even get a library card. Laws that put transgender people at more risk of hate based violence for engaging in everyday actions that require showing their ID means that transgender Kansans could miss out on these important parts of life to protect their safety. 
• There is no law that protects transgender Kansans from discrimination and this bill increases that risk. This policy is disingenuous and dangerous to many Kansans, including members of the LGBTQ+ community. While this bill purports to protect women it, in fact, seriously endangers the lives of transgender Kansans by prohibiting individuals from accessing restrooms, domestic violence shelters, rape crisis centers, and other essential spaces and services.
• This bill is based on lies and misinformation, feeding into hateful stereotypes that are creating real violence. This bill and those like it are based on the extremist belief that trans women are predators--i.e. just men dressing as women to get into bathrooms/locker rooms. The reality is that trans people are significantly more likely to be victims of violent crime than the rest of the population. Over 4x more likely, per recent research.