Kansas Legislature Passes Trans Bathroom Bounty, Drivers License Revocations

“They're using very overtly anti-democratic measures to pass all this stuff because they know that it's unpopular.”

Jimmy Emerson // Creative Commons

Earlier this week, Erin in the Morning reported that Kansas lawmakers were fast tracking sweeping anti-trans measures through the legislature. Following a rapidfire vote in both the House and the Senate, the bill passed, and is now on its way to the Governor’s desk.

It was rushed through the legislature with such speed and urgency that it was able to sidestep almost all public input on key provisions of the bill; among other things, there simply wasn’t time to show up.

Interestingly, however, an out-of-state anti-trans activist with groups like Do No Harm and the Alliance Defending Freedom—both Southern Poverty Law Center-designated hate/extremist groups—was on the scene for the vote, which he gloated about on social media.

“Doug Richey with ADF Action here in the Kansas State Capitol with some wonderful news,” the conservative talking head posted to X on Jan. 28. “Just want to stop and thank the sponsors and the legislators who’ve been working on this, quite frankly, for a number of years.”

He went on to laud the bill as a victory for the privacy of women and children. “They don’t have to worry about a member of the opposite sex coming into that space and creating the challenges that we all know exist,” he said.

Except these provisions actually do the opposite. The twin pieces of legislation, SB 244 and HB 2426, ban people from entering restrooms in publicly-owned buildings that deviate from their sex assigned at birth, all while explicitly empowering citizen-vigilantes of any sex to interrogate unsuspecting members of the public about their genitals—and to receive a monetary reward for doing so. This has earned it the nickname of the “Bathroom Bounty Hunter” bill.

It also is slated to forcibly revoke state IDs from many trans people. The legislation’s dire implications for trans Kansans’ ability to obtain accurate documentation puts their ability to travel, use a driver’s license, and even potentially vote at risk. And it all happened using a backdoor channel for rushing through emergency legislation dubbed the “gut and go” method.

“The original bill (HB 2426) required the state of Kansas to invalidate legally issued birth certificates and driver’s licenses to depict strictly someone’s sex assigned at birth,” a presser from the ACLU of Kansas reads.

“Even after 200 people submitted opposition testimony against the ID provision, the House Committee on Judiciary amended the bill to also apply to bathrooms, requiring such private spaces to be used only according to an individual’s sex assigned at birth. The committee members then stripped and inserted the contents of the bill into a separate ‘shell bill’ (SB 244) that had passed in a previous, different form.”

In other words, Kansas Republicans passed an already-maligned bill through one chamber, switched out the contents in the next, and were then able to propel the bills ahead with even more stringent anti-trans rules, circumventing the public’s ability to meaningfully weigh in or protest.

“They’re using very overtly anti-democratic measures to pass all this stuff because they know that it’s unpopular,” Isaac Johnson of Trans Lawrence Coalition told Erin in the Morning. “They have to get through ASAP because they don’t want anyone to talk about it.”

The original HB 2426 was introduced by Kansas lawmakers on the very first day of the 2026 session. The bill comes after courts struck down Attorney General Kris Kobach’s previous bids to persecute trans Kansans for violating their civil rights.

While Democratic Governor Laura Kelly is expected to veto these measures, the legislature is expected to have enough votes to override such a veto.

The bill technically only names public buildings—such as schools, some airports, public parks—in its provisions, but it also leaves many aspects up for interpretation, including whether some regulations, such as the bathroom bounties, can be extended to private businesses. The ambiguity is the point, Kansas State Senator Abigail Boatman told Erin in the Morning. It stokes fear and confusion among trans Kansans.

“I think the bounty section is highly problematic,” Boatman said. “There’s no established plan on how to enforce this law. There’s very little plan to explain about how complaints would be addressed outside of just, well, they’ll call the Attorney General’s office, and the Attorney General’s office can handle it.”

Even more, it offers an apparent financial incentive to violate the privacy of Kansans regardless of their gender or sex. “You could be paid money for leading to the conviction,” Boatman said. It also grants a mandate for state officials “to proactively invalidate people’s identifying documents and reissue them.”

Boatman warns it all furthers a dangerous precedent in Kansas and across the country—countless reports have already surfaced of law enforcement and anti-trans actors confronting trans and cisgender people alike for using the “wrong” bathroom. In one case, a cisgender woman was accosted in a Capitol Hill restroom by anti-trans agitators Reps. Lauren Boebert and Nancy Mace. They had mistaken her for Congresswoman Sarah McBride, who is trans.

Now, Boatman must reckon with her own safety as a Kansan. As an elected official who is also trans, the culture war bills are more than hypothetical. These bills, dripping with anti-trans animus, follow her to her own place of work, as do the men and women that write them.

“I am not here to be a cause,” Boatman told Erin in the Morning. “I’m here to be a legislator.”