A pair of trans-identifying women enjoying the support of the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit last month in hopes of forcing Kansas to indulge their delusions by letting them use men’s restrooms and false sex markers on state-issued IDs.
‘This bill protects girls and women.’
Rather than oblige the plaintiffs in thwarting the will of voters as expressed by supermajorities in both chambers of the Kansas legislature, a state judge denied the women’s most pressing request on Tuesday.
The bill, the veto, the law
Kansas Republicans passed a bill earlier this year requiring the designation of restrooms and locker rooms in public buildings for use by only one sex and mandating certain official state-issued documents to reflect the ID-holder’s actual sex.
This, of course, enraged radical LGBT activists such as Kansas state Rep. Abi Boatman (D), a man pretending to be a woman, who suggested that the reality-affirming bill was dehumanizing; Human Rights Campaign president Kelley Robinson, who called the bill an act of “cruelty”; and Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly, who vetoed the bill last month.
Kelly’s veto proved fruitless as the state Senate overrode it in a 31-9 vote on Feb. 17. Their Republican colleagues in the state House followed suit the next day in a decisive 87-37 vote.
The governor bemoaned the override, claiming that “this is a poorly drafted bill with significant, far-reaching consequences.”
State Rep. Carolyn Caiharr (R), among those who voted to override the veto, stated, “Our young women deserve to have restrooms and locker rooms where they can undress without men in the room. This bill protects girls and women, the ones feminists used to claim to stand for,” reported the Kansas Reflector.
Photo by Andrea Domeniconi/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
Kansas House Speaker Dan Hawkins (R) stated, “This isn’t about scoring political points, but doing what’s right for women and girls across our communities.”
The new law took effect once it was published in the register on Feb. 26, resulting in the invalidation of roughly 1,700 driver’s licenses and 1,800 birth certificates.
The lawsuit
A pair of trans-identifying women represented by attorneys from the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit on Feb. 26, alleging that the law “violates the Kansas Constitution’s guarantees of personal autonomy, privacy, equality under the law, due process, and free expression. It also violates the Kansas Constitution’s single-subject and clear title requirements.”
The lawsuit claimed that the two biological women, identified by the pseudonyms Daniel Doe and Matthew Moe, would suffer harm “because they will not be able to utilize a driver’s license with their correct gender marker or access public restrooms that accord with their gender identity.”
The trans-identifying ladies requested that Douglas County District Judge James McCabria block and declare the new law both unconstitutional and unenforceable.
The response
Judge McCabria refused on Tuesday to grant the women a temporary restraining order against the law while their case proceeds, writing, “A court that is too quick to assume too much about the facts or possible impacts of a law risks the appearance of either political bias or a lack of appreciation for the value and importance of the full, fair deliberative process in such circumstances.”
The judge apparently didn’t buy the plaintiffs’ claim that they may face “reprisal by employers and acquaintances that may not know their biological gender but learn of it by forced use of assigned restrooms or incidental disclosure by use of their identification documents.”
McCabria declined “the invitation to presume” that every employer or acquaintance would in every instance respond to the discovery of the women’s true sex with harassment or disfavor. He also rejected the assumption that “every restroom visit is fraught with the potential for violence or embarrassment if this law is not immediately suspended.”
The judge directed the parties involved in the case to appear in court later this month.
Harper Seldin, an attorney for the ACLU’s LGBTQ & HIV Project, stated, “This is a devastating, but hopefully temporary, setback for our clients and transgender people across the state of Kansas.”
Although the law merely prevents individuals from carrying untruthful driver’s licenses and invading private spaces intended for members of the opposite sex, Seldin claimed it threatens trans-identifying individuals’ “ability to hold a job, go to school, or go about their daily lives.”
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