TOPEKA, Kansas (AP) — Kansas Republican lawmakers have possibly enacted the most sweeping transgender bathroom law in the US on Thursday, overriding the Democratic governor’s veto of the measure without a clear idea of how his new law will be enforced.
The House vote was 84-40, giving supporters exactly the two-thirds majority they needed to overturn Gov. Laura Kelly’s action. The vote in the Senate on Wednesday was 28-12, and the new law will take effect on July 1.
Seven other states have enacted laws preventing transgender people from using bathrooms associated with their gender identities, but most of them apply to schools. Kansas law also applies to locker rooms, prisons, domestic violence shelters, and rape crisis centers.
The Kansas law is different from the laws of other states in that it legally defines male and female based on a person’s reproductive anatomy at birth and states that “distinctions between the sexes” in bathrooms and other spaces meet “important government objectives of protecting health. , security and privacy.”
But the law does not create a new crime, impose criminal penalties or fines for violations, or even specifically say that a person has the right to sue a transgender person who uses a facility aligned with their gender identity. Many supporters acknowledged before it happened that they had not considered how it would be run.
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