Kansas Republicans shift focus from gerrymandering to anti-trans law in quest for a special session

Kansans rally in support of transgender rights May 5, 2023, at the Statehouse in Topeka. (Sherman Smith/Kansas Reflector)

TOPEKA — Republican legislative leaders are urging lawmakers to support their push for a special session where they can both ban Kansans from altering gender markers on their driver’s licenses and redraw congressional maps.

Senate President Ty Masterson and House Speaker Dan Hawkins have been trying to garner enough signatures to force a special session in early November, with the goal of gerrymandering U.S. Rep. Sharice Davids, the lone Democrat in the state’s congressional delegation, out of office. But some Republican lawmakers have resisted the call to action initiated by President Donald Trump.

This week, Republican leaders shifted gears.

The Kansas Supreme Court on Monday declined to consider Attorney General Kris Kobach’s appeal in a legal fight over a 2023 law that attempted to define gender by conflating it with sex. Gender is a social and personal identity or expression, while sex refers to reproductive systems. Kobach used the law to argue that Kansans shouldn’t be allowed to change the gender markers on their driver’s licenses.

But the Kansas Court of Appeals determined the state suffered no harm from changed gender markers. Kansans have been allowed to modify their driver’s licenses since at least 2002, according to court records. There were just 380 changes from 2011 to 2022, and nobody raised concerns about the practice before Kobach filed his lawsuit.

Because the high court refused to hear Kobach’s appeal, Kansans can resume changing their gender markers as of Monday.

Masterson and Hawkins seized the opportunity to pressure Republicans into supporting their push for a special session.

Masterson, an Andover Republican, sent a letter Wednesday to Senate Republicans that said Kobach has urgently requested they call a special session to address an issue that Kobach considers “even more important than redistricting.” By adding a few words to Senate Bill 180, the letter said, the Legislature could “prevent a flood of individuals seeking to change their driver’s licenses.”

Attorney General Kris Kobach appears at an Oct. 1, 2025, news conference. Kobach lost a legal fight over whether Kansans should be allowed to change the gender markers on their driver’s licenses. (Sherman Smith/Kansas Reflector)

In a statement, Masterson said the Legislature could tackle both gender markers and redistricting in a special session.

“We can’t allow a narrow radical ideology the ability to alter basic concrete facts on documents with vital statistics,” Masterson said. “Should a special session be called, we can certainly handle both issues.”

Rep. Mark Schreiber, an Emporia Republican, said Hawkins sent a similar letter to House Republicans.

Schreiber is the rare Republican who votes against anti-trans legislation. He also opposes partisan redistricting.

“I was kind of surprised to have another reason to go into special session,” he said in an interview.

“To me, I don’t know that it’s worthy of a special session,” he added. “The thing with special sessions is once we get in there, they can bring up anything. It’s not limited to a topic. So we’ll see how it goes.”

He said he wouldn’t sign the petition to call a special session.

“I don’t think the purpose of redistricting is to try to ensure a majority in the U.S. House. It’s to make adjustments based on population changes,” Schreiber said. “You know, I could see this going on and on — every two or three years, four years, whatever, somebody comes up and says, ‘Well, we got to save the majority.’ And it could be either Rs or Ds. It doesn’t matter to me. Redistricting is not, in opinion, to be used for that purpose.”

Masterson and Hawkins hope to appease the president by drawing four congressional districts that each favor Republicans. In 2022, they attempted to drive Davids out of office by drawing maps that split the Kansas City metro and placed Lawrence into the largely rural 1st District that stretches all the way to the Colorado border. Another attempt would have to carve up Johnson County and place more rural terrain in Davids’ district.

Senate Minority Leader Dinah Sykes said in a statement that the timing of Kobach’s “urgent request” to change a law that has been on the books for more than two years “is highly suspicious.”

“It’s as though the idea of mid-decade redistricting isn’t generating enough momentum amongst the people of Kansas — because Kansans aren’t asking for a new map — so Republicans needed to return to a divisive social issue that they know will drum up outrage,” Sykes said.

Masterson’s response: “I’m grateful that Democrats at least acknowledge it’s outrageous, which in itself addresses the question of timing.”

Sykes, a Lenexa Democrat, said “none of this is about supporting Kansans and their real, immediate concerns about health care, property taxes, and putting increasingly more expensive food on the table.”

House Minority Leader Brandon Woodard, also a Lenexa Democrat, said “the unbalanced Republican supermajority is abusing their power to call another special session that will cost hundreds of thousands of Kansas tax dollars because the attorney general lost in court on a fabricated issue.”