Senate President Ty Masterson and Kansas Republicans just voted to send men into ladies’ bathrooms
Matthew Neumann speaks to a reporter on Feb. 6, 2026, at the Statehouse. He is the executive director of the LGBTQ Foundation of Kansas, which offers resources and mutual aid to LGBTQ+ Kansans. (Photo by Sherman Smith/Kansas Reflector)
The Kansas Legislature stands at a precipice.
As soon as today — Wednesday — House members could pass Senate Substitute for House Bill 244, a bill that officially turns transgender Kansans into second-class citizens, hunted by vigilantes and subject to mandatory discrimination. The Senate overrode Gov. Laura Kelly’s veto of the bill on Tuesday, and the House will be up next.
Members may try to assuage their guilty consciences by telling themselves that courts will block the most egregious parts of this bill. Pardon my French, but that’s pathetic. The lives of their fellow Kansans are at stake.
This bill will have precisely the opposite effect that its supporters intend.
Senate President Ty Masterson and 30 other Republican senators voted for men to invade women’s bathrooms. Look at the photo above the headline of this column. Folks like Matthew Hewey Neumann, who is by all appearances a man, will be required to put themselves at risk by going into the wrong facilities.
They will follow the law. But they will then face persecution for doing so. What would you think if you saw Neumann in a women’s restroom? Imagine you’re a Kansan whose brain has been poisoned by the “they/them” quips so casually dispensed by Masterson.
Here are my predictions about what will happen if this bill becomes law.
I might be wrong. But I’m also the one who correctly forecast that Kansas student athletes would face genital inspections after a bizarre anti-trans sports bill became law. So I have a good record.
Towns and cities will have to close public bathrooms
No library or public pool or courthouse or school will have multiple-occupancy bathrooms. They won’t be able to afford it.
The liability imposed by the law — up to $125,000 for an individual violation — means the only practical course will be extreme restrictions. All bathrooms will have to be converted to single-occupancy facilities, and those using them will have to leave a driver’s license or ID card at the front desk.
Think I’m nuts? Read the bill again. How can public workers possibly fulfill these restrictions responsibly? They will have to monitor bathroom use by each and every person and certify his or her gender, or expose their employers to liability.
Kansans will try to make money from persecuting trans people
The bill includes a provision allowing people to file civil lawsuits if they feel “aggrieved by the invasion of such individual’s personal privacy.” Think trans people shared the bathroom with you? Sue them for fun and profit!
One can easily imagine a band of bounty hunters coming together, dedicated to driving transgender people out of Kansas. They will accuse and file suit, persecute and revile those different than them. They might win, they might not, but they can enjoy the terror created along the way.
The bill as written makes no allowance for false accusations, so these vigilantes will have no reason to refrain from filing hundreds or thousands of complaints.
Who will investigate? Whose findings will stand? Who knows?
Everyone will be confused
Even those who try to do the right thing, both by their own morals and the law, will find themselves uncertain of the correct path. If a mother needs to take her 11-year-old autistic son into the women’s bathroom, who will stand in her way? The bill bans her from doing so.
Supporters will say the law intends nothing of the sort. But who decides that? And how can a public employee know for sure?
The entire legislation leaves municipalities grasping for answers. Republican lawmakers have shown they have no interest in answering them, or in explaining how millions of dollars in new costs might be covered.
Legislators may truly believe that Kansas needs this law. They may truly believe that we will all benefit from these restrictions. Fine.
But how many lawmakers understand all of the problems I’ve listed above? How many of them have admitted in private that the bill is a mess and almost certainly going to be overturned by judges? What’s more, how many of them have decided to vote for it regardless, reasoning that they don’t want to face the wrath of Masterson or House Speaker Dan Hawkins?
I don’t know the answers to all these questions. But we haven’t seen many profiles in courage thus far.
Clay Wirestone is Kansas Reflector opinion editor. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.