Kansas Republicans - The New Face Of Bigotry
They Did It in Daylight: Kansas SB 244 and the People Who Voted for It
On February 23, transgender Kansans opened their mail and found a letter from the Division of Vehicles. Their driver's licenses would no longer be valid as of February 26.
Three days.
Not "renew at your convenience." Not "at your next scheduled renewal." Surrender the license. Get a new one that says what the state has decided you are, regardless of how you look, how you live, or what happens to you when you hand it to a stranger.
I recently wrote a post called People Are Not Things, about the dehumanizing I see everywhere right now — the demonizing, the hate, the intolerance, the total absence of empathy or basic decency. In Kansas, that dehumanizing has a bill number.
What SB 244 actually does
It is called a bathroom bill. It is much more than that.
- It voids existing IDs. Kansas driver's licenses and birth certificates that reflect a transgender person's gender are invalidated and reissued. Not "can't be changed going forward" — revoked. The ACLU says this is a first in the nation.
- It closes the door behind you. Transgender Kansans, and anyone born in Kansas, can no longer update the gender marker on a state-issued birth certificate or license. Ever.
- It bans us from restrooms and other sex-separated facilities in government buildings — courthouses, DMVs, public universities, the Capitol itself — unless we use the ones matching our sex assigned at birth.
- It puts a bounty on us. SB 244 creates a private right of action: anyone who suspects a person is transgender and in the wrong restroom can sue them for $1,000. Not police. Anyone. Suspicion is the standard.
Sit with that last one. The law deputizes strangers to look at your face, your hands, your voice, and decide whether you owe them a thousand dollars.
And understand what an invalidated ID means in practice. As Harper Seldin of the ACLU put it, it threatens to out transgender people against their will every time they apply for a job, rent an apartment, or interact with police. Every traffic stop. Every I-9. Every time you buy cold medicine. The state has made your wallet into a disclosure document you never consented to sign.
They didn't sneak it. They overrode a veto to do it.
I want to be precise, because the truth is worse than "snuck through."
- January 28, 2026 — Passed the Senate 30–9 and the House 87–36.
- February 13 — Governor Laura Kelly vetoed it. She said the Legislature should stay out of the business of telling Kansans how to go to the bathroom and focus on making life affordable.
- February 17 — The Senate overrode the veto, 31–9.
- February 18 — The House overrode the veto, 87–37.
- February 26 — Published. Law.
The Kansas Reflector reported that the Legislature used anti-democratic tactics to avoid public hearings — so yes, they dodged the part where people like me get to speak. But they did not hide the vote. They cast it, on the record, over the objection of the state's chief executive, with their names attached.
Senate President Ty Masterson (head Bigot) issued a statement afterward saying the Senate had "restored sanity." He said Kansas Democrats are for "They/Them."
That is a sitting legislator, in an official statement, reducing human beings to a grammatical construction he finds contemptible. People are not things. He has told you exactly how he sees us, and I believe him.
The lawsuit
The ACLU, the ACLU of Kansas, and Ballard Spahr filed suit in Douglas County District Court on behalf of two transgender men whose licenses were invalidated. Doe v. State of Kansas argues SB 244 violates the Kansas Constitution's protections for personal autonomy, privacy, equality under the law, due process, and free speech.
The court denied a temporary restraining order on March 10. An evidentiary hearing on a temporary injunction is set to begin September 29, 2026.
So this is not over. But right now, today, it is the law, and people are living under it.
The roll call
Every one of these votes is public record. So are these names. This is not a secret and it was never meant to be — a recorded vote is the mechanism by which a representative answers to the people. So let's use it for exactly that.
Below are the legislators who voted to override Governor Kelly's veto and make SB 244 law. Names, districts, chambers, votes. Verify every one of them yourself at the official Kansas Legislature roll call:
Senate override, February 17, 2026 — Roll Call #53 — [link] House override, February 18, 2026 — Roll Call #0132 — [link]
I am not asking you to harass anyone. I am asking you to remember. These are public servants who took a public vote to strip a minority of the ability to prove who they are. That vote belongs to the voters now.
What you can do
- If you're in Kansas and SB 244 has affected you or someone you love, the ACLU of Kansas wants to hear from you:
aclu.org/KS_SB244. - Find your legislator in that list. If they voted yes, call the office. Not an email — a call. Ask what their plan is for the trans constituent who now can't safely show ID at a traffic stop.
- If they voted no, call and thank them. Nine senators and thirty-seven representatives held the line. That takes something.
- Mark September 29 on your calendar. The injunction hearing matters.
- Share this. Not the outrage — the roll call. The names are the part they'd rather you forgot by November.
They wrote it down. They signed their names to it. The least we can do is read it back to them.
Here are the Bigots that worked to sneak and pass through SB244 All of them Republicans, all of them doing EVIL and saying they are doing something good. Delusional.
Let uss get this on the books and in their family histories forever. Smiling Bigots, plain and simple.
