‘I will never relinquish my license’: New law stokes fear, confusion and defiance for trans Kansans
Wichita residents Rhashanna Grant, left, and Christine Lebeau participate in the Feb. 6, 2026, "pee-in" rally at the Kansas Statehouse to oppose legislation that restricts access to bathrooms in public buildings and invalidated driver's licenses. (Photo by Sherman Smith/Kansas Reflector)
TOPEKA — Rhashanna Grant is ready to be a martyr for transgender Kansans by refusing to give up her invalidated driver’s license or comply with a new state law regulating bathroom use.
Trans Kansans are living in fear and confusion under a new state law. Some want to leave the state.
Not Grant. She is defiant.
“I will never relinquish my license,” she said. “I have worked too hard for who I am today. They can come after me. They can imprison me. I will be the martyr. I’ll go to jail. Whatever it takes.”
Grant, who lives in Wichita, traveled in early February to Topeka to join a “pee-in” protest at the Statehouse before Senate Bill 244 became law.
But the GOP-dominated Legislature circumvented rules to avoid public input and silence debate while passing the bill and overriding Gov. Laura Kelly’s veto. The law requires transgender people to use bathrooms in public buildings and gender markers on driver’s licenses and birth certificates that match their sex assigned at birth.
The state immediately invalidated the driver’s licenses of 275 people who had changed their gender markers when the law took effect Feb. 26.
Two trans men from Lawrence filed a lawsuit challenging the law and are represented by the American Civil Liberties Union. But Douglas County District Judge James McCabria declined to halt enforcement of the law, saying he believes Kansans to be tolerant and supportive of each other.
In addition to criminalizing bathroom use, the law allows individuals who feel aggrieved by a transgender person’s bathroom use to pursue a “bounty” by filing a civil claim, holding the transgender person liable for $1,000 in damages.
Grant said she had seen a comment on social media in which someone bragged about being ready to “enforce the law myself.”
“I’m like, ‘You go for it, Hopalong Hoppity,'” Grant said. “My wife’s ex-Navy. I’m ex-U.S. Army. So go for it. Let’s see what happens. Go ahead, enforce the law, ***hole.”
She said she does stand-up comedy, but “lately it’s been a little difficult to do that.”
“As a comedian, you tend to make jokes about the things that bother you or your pain,” Grant said. “So, I mean, yeah, I could go on stage and joke about it, but I feel apathetic about going on stage now because it’s like, what’s the point? I don’t know.”
Jae Moyer appears before a March 10, 2026, demonstration outside the Senate chamber in the Kansas Statehouse. (Photo by Sherman Smith/Kansas Reflector)
‘Kansas is home’
Jae Moyer fled a Statehouse bathroom in fear March 10 before joining a protest of the new law by blocking entry to the Senate chamber.
Moyer, an Overland Park resident who is nonbinary, said they were complying with the law by using a men’s bathroom. A state senator walked in while Moyer was washing their hands. Moyer said they didn’t catch the name on the senator’s badge, just saw the “R.”
The senator looked Moyer up and down.
“I’ve never ran out of the bathroom quicker in my life,” Moyer said. “I was really concerned about what happens if that senator launched some sort of formal complaint against me.”
“It’s ridiculous,” Moyer added, “that we are now trying to police people just for using the bathroom that aligns with their gender identity, and that the public, anyone in the public, can just launch a complaint if they have an issue.”
Iridescent Roney, a former Kansas resident who now lives on the Missouri side of the Kansas City metro are, said she and her partner were planning to move back to Kansas in May. Now, they are weighing their options.
Roney was born in Pratt, attended public school in Kansas, and earned degrees from Kansas State University and the University of Kansas. She has family and friends in the state. She loves Kansas.
But she said she has been off hormones since last summer, first for health reasons and then because she lost her health insurance. Now she doesn’t want to go back on them because she is worried that future legislation could take her treatment away.
“Kansas is home to me, and I don’t want to leave,” Roney said. “However, they’re trying to really make it feel like it’s not home, and that’s the point. So we’ll be sticking it out as long as it’s physically safe for us to be here.”
Protesters demonstrate March 10, 2026, outside the Senate chamber in the Kansas Statehouse. (Photo by Sherman Smith/Kansas Reflector)
‘How do I get out’
Trans Liberty PAC, a national group focused on state-level policies and supporting pro-trans candidates, responded to the Kansas law by issuing its first-ever evacuation order.
The group also launched Operation Lifeboat to provide support to trans Kansans.
David Dodds, chief of operations for Trans Liberty, said the Kansas law is the worst enacted so far, although other states, including Idaho, are now following Kansas’ lead.
“It’s discriminating against a specific portion of people, and there are real penalties for just being a person now, at this point, which we’ve never really seen before in any state,” Dodds said.
“This is the first time we’ve forayed into direct operational work,” he added. “This is the first time that we’ve had to ring the bell, issue the alarm, and say, OK, we gotta go help people ourselves.”
Operation Lifeboat provides an online portal for trans Kansans to request help with housing and other needs. Allies can offer to be drivers, hosts, movers and donors.
Dodds said Trans Liberty used the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s National Incident Management System, which is available to government and nongovernment entities, to set up Operation Lifeboat. The team working to serve trans Kansans has experience in disaster response and refugee evacuation, he said.
As of Thursday, there had been 34 direct requests in the past six days, Dodds said. He provided an example of someone who couldn’t go to work without a valid driver’s license and needed financial assistance because they were facing eviction.
“Our immediate issue was taking care of people who were going to be homeless if we didn’t step in,” he said.
The people who want to move out of state don’t know where to go, he said. They just know they want to go. He recommends places like Colorado, which has legislative protections for transgender people and a large trans community in Denver, or Minneapolis, which also has a large trans community with resources.
“A lot of people are just like, ‘I’ll just go to Kansas City.’ I’m like, ‘Well, I don’t really think that’s a good idea, because you’re putting yourself in the same sort of situation that you are right now, with a government that could pass a law at any given point in time to take your rights away,’ ” he said.
Regardless of whether people are staying or leaving, he said, “there’s definitely a fear.”
“They have no idea what to do now,” Dodds said. “Should I move? Should I stay? Should I get a new ID? Should I not get a new ID? Should I cave in to the law? You see a lot of confusion and a lot of anxiety about, OK, what do I do, and if I’m leaving, how do I get out now?”