The Kansas House of Representatives overrode the veto of Democrat Governor Laura Kelly on a bill that limits bathrooms and locker rooms in public buildings to biological genders on Wednesday, 18 February.
The result of the vote caused a serious meltdown among Kansas Democrats, especially Abi Boatman, a transgender representative—a biological male identifying as a woman—who described the bill as ‘obviously discriminatory’ against transgender people and claimed it would make their lives ‘exponentially more difficult and dangerous’.
Boatman then made the ridiculous claim that the bill is ‘yet another way of policing women’ and ‘our bodies in the absence of men and masculinity being subjected to the same scrutiny’. Hard words coming from a man. He continued by stating that ‘there is no outrage about trans boys playing in sports’ and ‘no handwringing about husbands and sons sharing their bathrooms with trans men’—both untrue, considering that the bill precisely limits biological males to men’s bathrooms and biological females to women’s bathrooms.
Boatman’s meltdown highlights how ridiculous this debate has been from the start, with a man claiming to be a woman speaking against the perceived infringement of real women’s rights—which is obviously not the case in connection with this bill.
The legislation in question was originally approved by the Kansas Legislature on 28 January. The measures introduced by the bill prohibit individuals from using bathrooms in government buildings that do not align with their biological sex as recorded at birth.
Through a so-called ‘gut and go’ manoeuvre, Republican lawmakers inserted additional language requiring all multi-occupancy bathrooms, locker rooms, and showers in state and local government buildings to be designated strictly as male or female. The bill also ties official identification documents, such as driver’s licences, to biological sex at birth.
‘The bill is part of wider efforts to reverse years of woke policies and indoctrination in the United States’
Those who violate the rules would first receive a written warning, while a second violation could trigger a $1,000 fine. A third violation would constitute a misdemeanour offence. Public institutions that fail to comply face fines of up to $25,000 for a first offence and $125,000 for subsequent violations.
The bill is part of wider efforts to reverse years of woke policies and indoctrination in the United States, led by President Donald Trump himself. Right after his inauguration, Trump signed an executive order declaring that there are only two genders—male and female—and directed federal departments to adopt a binary, biology-based approach to sex classification in federal programmes and documents. Building on this, Trump signed another executive order on 5 February 2025 that bars transgender women and girls from competing on girls’ and women’s sports teams and from using associated female locker rooms in federally funded programmes.
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